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JOHN STUART MILL 

and the 

Philosophy of Mediation 

H. K. GARNIER 



Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

in the Faculty of Philosophy, 

Columbia University 



PUBLISHED BY 

W. D. GRAY 

106 SEVENTH AVE , NEW YORK 

1919 



JOHN STUART MILL 

and the 

Philosophy of Mediation 



H. K. GARNIER 



Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

in the Faculty of Philosophy, 

Columbia University 



PUBLISHED BY 
W. D. GRAY 

106 SEVENTH AVE . NEW YORK 



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I. 

PHILOSOPHIA MEDIATRIX 

This expression smacks of limitation; but the object of the following 
discussion is not to circumscribe that inquiry which, on account of its 
comprehensiveness and its depth, is the greatest reflective effort of the 
human mind. The purpose is rather to claim for philosophy complete 
emancipation and enfranchisement as a perfectly free inquiry, capable of 
moving without let or hindrance whithersoever there is any medium, how- 
ever tenuous, which will make motion at all possible. We do not recog- 
nize for philosophy any limitations as a particular science ; for it there are 
no necessary presuppositions whatever. No postulates exist, no so-called 
fundamentals, no ends or aims, which are not part of itself, developments 
of its own characteristic activity. There are no necessary principles, 
there is no necessary order of its development ; for philosophy is princi- 
ple, and is order, in its very essence. Philosophy is as it were organism 
expressed in terms of thought. 

The underlying presupposition of this essay may be briefly stated. It is, 
that philosophy, despite its air of sophistication, is still (like Paul's Athen- 
ian audience) "too superstitious"; or, if one prefer the RV, "very re- 
ligious" ; either phrase will serve here. Political liberty was at least pro- 
moted by the separation of church and state. Full liberty of speculation 
can only come as the result of the separation of philosophy and religion. 
This statement is made in the interest alike of both these activities. What 
is needed is an irreligious philosophy and an unphilosophical religion. 
Or, to state the problem somewhat dfferently, we desiderate a philosophy 
and a religion which are both undogmatic, — except indeed where there 
is question of a fact ; facts always announce themselves dogmatically, that 
is to say, categorically, and they are entitled to this privilege. To put it 
in still another way, it is the theological element, now blending with 
religion properly so-called, now with "philosophy," which brings not a 
little confusion into our thought concerning both these ancient and prec- 
ious expressions of the spirit of man. Time is undoubtedly assisting in 
the rather rapid elimination of the confusion; modernity is anti-theologi- 
cal. But, to descend to the vernacular, "One's afraid, and t'other 
daresn't!" An influential school of thought is still frankly apologetical 
in method, sometimes unctuous in manner, and visibly suprarational in 
aspiration. And religion, while getting rather cold comfort from phi- 
losophy, still has the habit of craving rational foundations, and feeling 
ashamed of the mysticism which is its power and life, apart, that is, from 
its practical expressions. 

3 



Historically a certain ambiguity has attached to the character, position 
and function of that universal speculation which we call philosophy. This 
situation reflects the problem arising from the conflict of two points of 
view, made inevitable by the existence of two interests, between which 
philosophic speculation functions as in some sense a mediatrix. The 
problem has been, whether philosophy should assimilate to theosophy or 
to science ; whether it should assume the character of a technic and reve- 
lation of divine mysteries, or that of an instrument of human knowledge 
and wisdom ; not scorning practical ends, — if only those ends be compre- 
hensive, and adapted to fit into a comity of all human ends. The problem 
was and is, whether philosophy is to be a method of theology, or a higher 
synthesis of the principles of the sciences, and so of "science" in general, — 
that is, of knowledge in the widest sense ; and thus to become eventually 
the method of universal science. Or again, — formulating the problem in 
terms of Comte's wellknown "three stages" of man's intellectual evolution, 
— Is philosophy to remain in the "theological" stage, — which for the 
archpriest of Positivism meant virtually superstition, and even "animism" ; 
or, in the "metaphysical" stage, in Comte's narrow sense of Platonic 
realism, the stage of a purely abstract philosophy, or an "existential 
logic"; or, is philosophy to be the "positive" science of positive sciences, 
a system of the implications and of the general laws of thought, knowl- 
edge, nature and life itself, — culminating in a science of man's own life 
in relation to his natural environment, and also to his social environment 
or place and function in the social "organism." 

Before the Christian era philosophy, under the spell of Egyptian sun- 
shine, became intoxicated with divinity, and the divine afflatus has not 
yet evaporated. She was thus found a meet handmaid for Religion during 
many centuries. And Catholicism heaped much honor on her faithful 
handmaid; for having chosen to establish dogmatically historical and 
scientific foundations for the Church, she sorely needed a philosophic 
apologetic. Pre-Christian neo-Platonism, the original handmaid, in proc- 
ess of time led to the same service ancient philosophy, as brought to its 
apogee by the master of them that know and untainted with Oriental 
mysticism ; and this new handmaid was even more honored. But she was 
more sober and sophisticated, and in due time injected the virus of sceptic- 
ism into certain who thenceforth labored to emancipate philosophy, adum- 
brating more or less dimly that philosophy was the higher concept, the 
larger context, the genus of intellectual activity in general ; while religion 
was a species of experience, a technic of salvation, though an all-pervading 
influence. 

Philosophy being a sort of presiding genius of science has direct rela- 
tion to religion thru the relation of the latter to certain of the special 
sciences. For instance sociology studies religion as historically a very 
important factor in social evolution. Above all, as James showed so sym- 

4 



pathetically and with such penetrating analysis, the phenomena of relig- 
ious "experience" are a varied and important field for psychological 
inquiry and speculation. But philosophy and religion, if both should be 
emancipated, would be contrasted in that the former would be an inquiry 
of the reason and senses and powers of the mind; while the latter would 
be a quest of the spirit, a suprarational realization, or rather direct appre- 
hension of something incommunicable, undemonstrable ; an elevation, en- 
thusiasm, chastening mood, private to the individual soul. 

Thruout its history philosophy has occupied a more or less ambiguous 
position. As the most intelligent attempt to understand the world, it was 
at first identical with science, and as such came into opposition with relig- 
ion. For religion was born in the emotional and imaginative and instinc- 
tive simplicity of family life, and was essentially the noblest expression 
of the consciousness of blood kinship. The opposition was the opposition 
between intelligence and instinct. It may be said that early Greek philoso- 
phy was a kind of naturalism, and as such, an antithesis to the religion 
of the hearthfire ; just as it continued to be antithetical to the imaginative 
nature-cult which grew out of, and was simply a more imposing form of, 
primitive ancestor-worship. 

Now in a sense both this religion and this philosophy are what we term 
"natural/' — and by this we mean spontaneous and unconscious — at any 
rate not self-conscious. What we know as the existential question was 
unthought of, would perhaps have been deemed irrelevant, in reference to 
the imaginative objects of religious reverence. What we know alas too 
well as the epistemological problem had not laid its ghostly hand on the 
cool brow of a philosophy which thought of itself only as "science," if it 
thought of itself at all ; certainly it never thought of itself "subjectively." 

Again, both this religion and this philosophy were what we term imag- 
inative also; but both were so unconsciously. The opposition that grew 
up between them was due to the difference in scope, in distinterestedness, 
in dispassionateness; between a work of cosmic imagination, and the 
idealism of love and filial veneration. Thus wisdom becomes divorced 
from worship, and the seeds are sown of the later warfare of science 
and religion, or (more suitably expressed) of science and dogmatic the- 
ology ; which we may venture to call the conflict of knowledge with super- 
stition and ignorance ; the immediate question of the hour being, for the- 
ology and apologetic philosophy, just what is included in the term "super- 
stition." 

Presumably the archaic character which religion retains so persistently, 
its ultarconservative tendency, is due in indefinite measure to the fact that 
its ideal objects of reverence have provoked in abundant extent artistic 
expression. Even among our American Indians, whose religion is the only 
one we know as indigenously Occidental, we find a folklore which en- 
shrines their cultus, and at the same time constitutes their literature. 

5 



This reactionary spirit of religion is usually attributed apologetically to a 
reverence due to a feeling of the extreme value attached to the concep- 
tions. But it is a fair question whether the natural permanence of the 
works of art created so spontaneously in the days of its youthful vigor 
— including literature, as well as architecture and sculpture and painting — 
has not been about equally accountable. But this is a digression. 

The discussion is as to the historically ambiguous place of philoso- 
phy, which has not yet been made out. We have seen it suggesting by 
implication the criticism of religion. Now religion enshrined in art had 
transfixed religious conceptions in their naivete ; and unhappily for them, 
time revealed them not alone in their anthropomorphism but in their im- 
morality. Meanwhile the sceptical movement in philosophy discredited 
metaphysics (and that meant or included, "science") and threw interest 
upon man, — that is, upon ethical problems. But so wide had become the 
breach between philosophy and religion that the ethical philosophers in- 
curred suspicion of "atheism." His moral idealism could not save, in fact 
destroyed, a Socrates. 

We are dealing in this situation of course with a decadent religion, 
and one which was state-sanctioned and bigoted. But the hostility seen 
is characteristic; and the fact also, that just because the ethical inquiry 
took a more or less rational, that is to say scientific, form, this was enough 
to identify it with philosophy, and to condemn it as critical of sacrosanct 
tradition. 

It is a fact passing strange that what we know as science, natural science, 
grew not from the roots of early Greek naturalism, — altho it may well be 
regarded as a revival of that physical speculation, controlled however by 
an experimental method, — but arose out of the last stage — and lowest — 
of an expiring religion. For there came a time when religion turned for 
aid to philosophy. This was the period of the Egyptian episode alluded 
to above. The noble efforts of a Philo and of a Plotinus to fuse philoso- 
phy and religion could only result in a theosophy which, while it exercised 
a notable influence as a mystical element in the new Christian cult, has 
hardly been esteemed philosophy, at least by the Western world. More- 
over, on what we may call its native heath, this theosophy, by an ever- 
increasing emphasis of its greatest exponents upon the realism credited to 
Plato, passed in a few generations from physics to theurgy or magic, — a 
form of religion so sinister as to confuse as it were heaven and hell. 

Magic persists not merely in certain wellknown religious ceremonies, 
but in certain common notions and habits as well. But as to its origin 
honors are even for altho magic is primitive in appearance and found 
among tribes of low culture, it was used with all solemnity by the antique 
civilizations, and indeed only in the era of strictly modern science has 
become formally discredited. When philosophy and the ancient religion 

6 



however descended hand and hand into the witches' cavern, their recon- 
ciliation and their degradation were, alike complete. 

Yet magic, which considered as a religious practice is coercion of the 
gods, has a quasi-scientific aspect ; it is essentially experimental in method ; 
it proceeds by trial and error ; it seeks to imitate nature and produce nat- 
ural results under conditions artificially arranged and controlled. In a 
word, magic is a method of investigation. Split into astrology and 
alchemy this character became emphasized in the pseudo-science of the 
mediaeval period. The idea of control is implicit in the search for the 
philosophers' stone, while the conception that the stars operate in human 
destiny is not wholly mythological. 

Given a young, vigorous and highly supernatural religion on the one 
hand, and a science claiming to be natural and becoming progressively so, 
and which was almost as clearly differentiated from philosophy in the 
higher sense of that term, as from religion itself, — we have the conditions 
of a renewed antithesis, and the ambiguity of philosophy's position is 
revealed. It is clear that in the history of modern philosophy she has had 
to mediate between a supernatural religion and a natural science. Her 
office has been in some way to explain and reconcile an inevitable antag- 
onism. But thruout its history an analogous situation may be descried. 

Now there was an obvious solution for this situation. For we need only 
change the terms in order to see that philosophy was to mediate between 
old knowledge and new ; and that means that its office was to acknowledge 
the new additions to science and give them their place in the sun, or guar- 
antee their logical validity in relation to the comity of knowledge. In- 
cidentally to declare a truce for the purpose of burying the dead! For 
philosophy is the judicial attitude per se ; it fortunately has no interests 
to serve in the way of harmonizing by any tour de force facts or theories 
to a characteristic content or subject-matter of its own. It is as disin- 
terested as a trained nurse. Philosophy is the arbiter, and is well satisfied 
with the judges' seat. Philosophy is not truth ; it is the judge of truth, 
and acknowledges the suzerainty of science, in the sense of knowledge 
genuinely verified or verifiable experimentally. 

It would seem to be inevitable that the authority of a knowledge which 
rests securely on the method of observation, should be mediated by the 
judgment of philosophy even to that most treasured inheritance and pos- 
session of mankind — religion. But this judgment will not reflect the 
authority of the narrowly scientific and often purblind specialist, who is 
really interested not in scientific truth, but in the facts of a particular 
science only. The comprehensiveness of view and impartiality of philoso- 
phy, its depth and sobriety, guarantee religion in all its just claims. But 
first this trinity, this triune manifestation of the restless quest of man's 
spirit, must be differentiated; and that task is seemingly incomplete. 

7 



But to return to the question why philosophy did not make the (as we 
may see) obvious solution of its ambiguous position. 

The loyalty of philosphy cannt be impugned. But an imperial Church 
holding not alone the keys of spiritual destiny, but the sword of tem- 
poral power, decreed a supernatural philosophy of history. Such a power 
was able to bend the intellect of man to its will ; by virtue of certain 
invaluable services to political society, and to mankind in treasuring the 
vestiges of antique culture, the Church became the heir of the ages. And 
by holding philosophy in thrall, by confining speculation within the 
charmed circle of authoritative dogma, she held science at bay for a millen- 
nium. So mighty was her spell that in certain realms of inquiry science 
has become enfranchised only within the memory of living men. 

Having thus ventured the opinion that philosophy has always suffered 
from the dubiety of its character and function, and attempted to account 
for the endurance of that disadvantage, one may remark quite simply 
that philosophy, naturally representing the summit of man's knowledge, 
rather than the mystic vision of his faith and spiritual aspiration, has 
been too partial to religion. The Mediatrice sometimes wears the mien 
of high-priestess. This is an evident survival from the historic situation, 
and especially the long Scholastic subjection. A millennium of ecclesiasti- 
cal monopoly of education could not fail to produce a characteristically 
religious, or rather, theological, philosophy; one, religious in interest 
and in subject-matter, and theological in method. 

Now these words are not meant to imply any denunciation of this 
theological philosophy but merely attempt to picture and account for its 
character. It has represented truth and reality, and has been a great 
force in molding social organization and institutions. Speaking pragmati- 
cally, it has been true, — is true still, — and is still a great social force. 
Wherever it has been or is effective, its validity as the expression of a 
certain type of experience is a simple matter of fact. But if, from what 
we can only regard as a more modern and scientific point of view, this 
philosophy appears more or less a picturesque ruin, it is without irony that 
we say, it is more beautiful thus ; we would not have it restored, — tho its 
aspect is not devoid of pathos. But better a ruined Parthenon than a 
"restored" one ! 

One of the most striking things in the history of modern philosophy 
has been the oft-repeated situation in which the thinker has started with 
a very conscious revolt against dogmatism, and with scientific presupposi- 
tions and purposes, and speedily back-slidden to a scholastic and theologi- 
cal position and technic. Old metaphysical habits of the tribe seem to have 
regained a disappointing ascendancy. Had philosophy remained aware of 
its ambiguous position, and that the solution of the problem lay in its 
acting as mediator between religion and science, what confusion might 
have been avoided. Even when based on the rejection of the supernatural, 

8 



and conceived with practical ends in view, thought was generally domin- 
ated by an impracticable ideal of rationality. And this produced meta- 
physical conceptions as unfruitful as those of the older theological dog- 
matism. Indeed it may be questioned whether any rational system of 
ethics (on any principle of "rationality" known to traditional logic, at 
any rate) can become and remain a permanent and developing force in 
shaping conduct. Such a system shares the formalism of its deduction 
and becomes fixed, artificial and at length archaic, and takes its niche in 
the museum of philosophical heirlooms. 

If philosophy is to become scientific in character it must make an entente 
with common sense. For it is the character of scientific truth when for- 
mulated, to be accessible to common intelligence, — at least where general 
education (however faulty) has reached the average and attained the 
social scope it has at present. Scientific truth is clear and obvious in the 
main, and common sense has an avidity for such truth. Science realizes 
the ideals of common sense, in a manner fulfils, and will yet more greatly 
fulfil, its hopes, and verify its judgments and discernments. The conven- 
tional antithesis of philosophy versus common sense ought to become dis- 
credited along with dogmatic and transcendental philosophy. One means 
in this connection by "common sense," not that misnamed common sense 
which credulously receives all manner of time-honored superstitions, relig- 
ious, political and philosophical ; but the up-to-date, sophisticated, perhaps 
over-positivistic and sceptical common sense, which gives ungrudging 
credence and unprejudiced moral support to scientific discovery and effort, 
and abhors superstition ; the "common sense" which unconsciously created 
the pragmatical method. 

It is true that the doctrines presented and defended by apologetic phi- 
losophy are too anaemic to be deemed religiously, or even theologically, 
adequate, except by the most rationalistic schools of theology, most op- 
posing them thru a true instinct of self-preservation, as most subtilly 
undermining faith. Still, a philosophy of the Absolute, or an "idealistic" 
system, is an apologetic weapon of a sort against types of criticism and 
empiricism or of scientific materialism, which are more menacing to super- 
natural faith, — in as far as its alleged rational and historical, or scientific, 
basis is concerned. It is not for philosophy to deny to faith its legitimate 
objects, its spiritual or ideal realities. But in as far as faith asserts exist- 
ences, claims historical foundations staged with a certain definite cosmo- 
logical background, these data become subject-matter of special sciences, 
and thru the medium of these are reflected in the domain of philosophy as 
logical and ontological problems. Similarly with dogma ; considered as a 
system of existential or metaphysical formulae, corresponding to, repre- 
senting, and attempting logical expression of, the ideals of faith, with a 
view to propagating and conserving these ideals, thru the medium of rea- 
son, — religious dogma enters the purview of philosophy, and may con- 

9 



ceivably from a metaphysical and logical standpoint be invalidated, as in- 
compatible with the general state of human knowledge. 

With regard to the "postulation" by philosophy of certain religious 
"truths," either as ideals of pure reason, after the Kantian technic, or as 
working assumptions (certainly much preferable), according to the 
method suggested by early pragmatism, — it may be doubted whether this 
will not delay the emancipation of philosophy, and postpone its assuming a 
truly scientific character. The object of such postulation is of course the 
attainment of moral ends ; but it may be asked, and has yet to be proved, 
whether results would differ for the worse if nothing were "postulated," 
but the desired ends consciously proposed. For if these ideals are thus 
set up as reals, it must needs be upon some kind of dialectical support, 
where they remain inaccessible to "observation" ; and we have once more 
the apologetic question and the old problem of their reality. What the 
dogmatists forget apparently is, the originally supposed empirical founda- 
tions of belief in types of reality we are now asked to accept on dialectical 
evidence alone. Philosophy may claim to be emancipated from supernat- 
uralism in its sanctioned theological forms, but this type of dialectic 
throws us back at least to the position of metaphysical realism. 

The fundamental fallacy of transcendental dialectic is, that it appears 
to disregard the fact — which history reveals — that originally the trans- 
cendence of itself by the mind rested on an empirical basis. The feat 
was performed by the primitive imagination, which deemed that it had 
concrete evidence of the existence of beings it dimly conceived from the 
supposed manifestations of certain powers, characters, purposes and rela- 
tions to mankind. The loftiest pantheism, the most mysterious and ob- 
scure theosophy, the "blindest" speculative dogmatism, have the same 
humble origin, — the origin we may presume, — of all religion, — the general 
animistic or spiritualistic outlook of primitive man. Positive science has 
transformed the primitive "facts." Today, no transcendental dialectic can 
be an adequate substitute for the earlier empirical proofs. It only reveals 
(as critical philosophy shows) the mind's limitation to the sphere of 
experience. 

"Experience" however is (may we not assert?) more than "phenom- 
enal." That is, phenomena, — barring inaccurate observation and experi- 
ment, and false inference, — present directly reality; for a "reality" or 
being the mind cannot know is meaningless. To posit the unknowable is 
to indulge in a fruitless mysticism. To take as postulate somewhat un- 
known, to which is attributed by hypothesis characters for which the mind 
has "categories" or analogies, properties in some degree or manner related 
to known reality, — this process is as it were the salient in the firing-line of 
advancing thought. But to seek the unknowable is indeed to plunge into 
the utter darkness of unreality, with no possibility of a rational result. 
It is thinking in empty concepts ; it is talking a solemn nonsense. Not with- 

10 



out a true instinct did theologians of the XlXth century denounce 
"agnosticism." Its modest attitude, its doctrine that God is unknowable, 
was as deadly to theism — far more deadly in fact, than the militant atheism 
which was ever uncongenial to the temper of scholarship — especially to 
that of philosophy. Truly an unknowable being is non-existent. It is 
inconceivable that the mere name of the "Being" should be revealed by 
some dialectical hocus-pocus transcending reason, and nothing or nothing 
definite, of its character or nature be knowable. 

People justify "faith," that is, belief in the existence and relation to 
themselves, of supernatural beings and a supernatural world, on the 
ground that belief controls conduct. But is not the very opposite a truer 
account? Religion is made apologist for the status quo. It commonly 
does not judge movements, which are the judges of it, rather; but it is 
wont to be "interpreted" in terms of the movements, — in so far as these 
prove irresistible to an opposition often none too heroic. Historically, the 
West has formed its views, its ideals, especially its economic ideals, and 
forced Christianity to conform. The Occidental ideals of so-called suc- 
cess, of business, of imperialism, of "materialism," refuse to be related 
save by a veritable tour de force to the religion which is supposed to have 
created the civilization of the West. The social forces of the West, even 
in the pre-Renaissance period, were too strong and "positive" for a religion 
of passive Oriental detachment and other-worldliness to cope with very 
successfully. Nothing is more amazing, as nothing is more picturesque, 
than the mediaeval blend of anarchic feudal confusion and violence, and 
the Church of the Nazarene sweeping on in the most superb pride ever 
mortal or mortal estate assumed, to the greatest power, wealth and osten- 
tation among the world's institutions. The extraordinary thing is, that the 
West ever accepted to the extent that it did, the pessimism of Christianity ; 
but the Church had created sacraments which should mitigate its rigors. 
Originally, it is apparent that "faith" was by no means based on moral 
grounds. Mere belief was the all-important thing. Belief must be jus- 
tified in itself ; it was conceived as the very essence of spiritual life. The 
fact that moderns attempt to justify it by something else, shows vividly 
how they have lost the original position, and forgotten the original 
dialectic. 

But in that age-long strife which it is the mediating office of philosophy 
to reconcile, science has been wont to meet dogmatism with dogmatism. 
Science, properly uncompromising where fact and theory strictly veri- 
fied or verifiable are concerned, sharing the eager habit of human thought, 
of pressing on to ultimate "unity" and systematization, became almost 
inevitably and unconsciously dogmatic in its own characteristic way; it 
tends to create its own kind of transcendental illusion, and generate its 
own species of faith. Faith often very short-sighted and narrow, and 
sufficiently bigoted, — not to say unsympathetic. It must be noticed how- 

11 



ever that scientific belief appeals to only one kind of evidence; and does 
not hesitate to yield ground when that evidence is really against it. Its 
dogmatism is the result of an exuberant optimism, leading to a premature 
generalizing and universalizing of its deductions. It has the nature of 
primitive "faith" in that it is due to vision, and not to mere tradition 
and the authority of the dead hand. There is another sharp distinction, 
also, between the two types of dogmatism, and that is, — that the objects 
about which science makes affirmations are verifiable in their nature, 
their character, even if not in their universality. As for example the 
force of gravitation ; the existence of this force can certainly be asserted, 
its properties investigated, and its operations formulated as scientific and 
''natural" law ; altho its presence thruout the indefinite extension of space 
cannot be actually or immediately known. Its laws however are not con- 
tingent on such universal verification. 

Another very important fact to remember is, — that aside from the ob- 
vious unverifiability in a scientific sense of the "objects" of theological 
dogmatism, theology, in making use as an apologetic defense of philosophic 
systems of the a priori or intuitive type, is leaning on a broken reed. For 
while it is true that God may be identified with the "Absolute" or the 
"Infinite," and so an apparent philosophic verification of theological dogma 
appealed to, the theologian is obliged to ignore the fact that the reverse is 
impossible. Sir Leslie Stephen in the third volume of his English Utili- 
tarians points this out, as well as the further truth that the metaphysical 
absolute and infinite are incompatible. The author is discussing J. S. 
Mill's Examinaiton of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. This philosophy 
was especially abhorrent to Mill, because of its implications for educa- 
tion and the science of morals, on which his hopes for social and human 
improvement were placed. To base morality on intuitive foundations was 
to transport the ethical problem beyond the possibility of scientific treat- 
ment and solution. Mr. Stephen speaks we presume as an "Agnostic," 
but his remarks are instructive. To be sure, the discussion is purely 
"dialectical," — a fact however, due to the nature of the subject, and itself 
an illustration of the typical method of a philosophic apologetic. It is 
hardly necessary, or even useful, to discuss the subject here in any detail; 
altho few of those who feel in the metaphysical ultimates, support for 
their religious beliefs (they commonly do not admit a distinction of relig- 
ious and theological beliefs), ever stop to reflect that philosophy (even 
such philosophy) does not — cannot — return the compliment! Clearly, 
neither the "Absolute" nor the "Infinite" is — godlike. There may be some 
faint resemblance of the 'O theos of Greek speculation. But "he" too 
had nothing in common with the Olympian company. Far fainter is 
their likeness to a "personal God." As regards the incompatibility of these 
terms, used in their apologetic meaning as synonyms, Mr. Stephen notes 
that an "absolute" is something absolutely limited, — so that anything 

12 



or any fact is, as such, an absolute, — and thus it is the very antithesis 
of the "infinite"; unless it be a "limited infinite" (which is a formal 
mathematical conception) ; but that is just„what the Infinite in apologetic 
usage is not. 

We have mentioned John Stuart Mill in this connection, and it is our 
purpose to study his thought (and not apart from his character and aims) 
under various heads, and to portray him, as a result of an impartial and 
"objective" but appreciative examination, in a character as philosophic 
thinker corresponding essentially to the view of philosophy presented in 
this essay. His apparent extremes, if one admit them at all, seem to 
have been due to his antagonism — more pronounced than our own age 
demands — to the "ancient ideas" which he saw obstructing progress. But 
he frees himself, according to all accounts, — including his own memoirs, 
and the evidence of his writings, from all orthodoxies, or mere par- 
tisanships. 

Mill was a mediator of philosophic ideas, in the genuine spirit of dis- 
passionate speculation, because — scientific, progressive, radical, even 
"revolutionary," that he was — he was progressively less under the illusions 
of his optimism, as his intellectual and practical career unfolded. That 
he had a "practical career," must be accountable in great measure for 
this happy moderation. He was no doctrinaire, — not after he passed the 
period of youngest manhood; and he was still a boy when he embraced 
orthodox Benthamism with religious fervor. But his business life too 
began when he entered the India House under James Mill's administra- 
tion, at the age of seventeen. 

One of his reproaches to Comte was, that he should fancy a "positive" 
and complete science of society, — a full-fledged scientific sociology, — 
would spring into existence once the positive method was applied to social 
phenomena. Which strange and impracticable optimism on Comte's part 
was in glaring contrast to the implications of the classification of the 
sciences, and the philosophy of history, which he "established." For if 
it took some three centuries of modernity — to say nothing of a millennium 
before — to bring the sciences to a positiveness imperfect even in mathe- 
matics, and even more incomplete or, entirely lacking in each one of the 
"dependent" or "later" sciences, — the degree of dependence and the lack 
of positive character, due to theological or metaphysical tutelage, increas- 
ing pari passu until you reached sociology, which was admittedly (in 
so far as even existent) not positive at all; — if Comte recognized that 
such results were the work of the whole epoch of scientific development 
since Descartes, he might, it would seem, be supposed to expect the actual 
application of his social philosophy to reorganization, to require a long 
period for its completion. 

Mill was incapable, in any event, of the impracticable dogmatism which 
inevitably grows out of such over-systematization. He had not the intel- 

13 



lect for such a universal reconstruction, and all the conditions and circum- 
stances of his education, training and career, made him combine in a 
useful way the speculative and. the active life. He remained, as a thinker, 
essentially insular, and tho superior to Philistinism, was not the "Occi- 
dental European" that Comte aspired to be. But these limitations com- 
bined with his character and dominant interests to make him remarkable 
as a philosophic moderator. 



II. 

JOHN STUART MILL AND THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 

Consistency would perchance never have been deemed a jewel, had 
Shakespeare taken the trouble to dissect a common toad; for he would 
have found no jewel in its head, and so must needs recast his metaphor. 
But whether the praise of consistency as a rare virtue be due to a zoologi- 
cal blunder on the part of the great poet, or a mere conservative shibboleth, 
for the collectivist-individualism of the present moment the less eulogistic 
characterization by the best known of American essayists, that consis- 
tency is merely a nocturnal disorder, and not of minds of the larger caliber, 
will be more congenial. 

Now there are certain grea,t thinkers to whom the world owes much, 
who themselves owe to consistency much that makes their systems 
famous. They are conveniently described as system-builders. But it is 
not the systems in their integrity that have become great creative episodes 
and monuments of evolution in the history of thought and culture and 
institutions. In the retrospect we can see that, to all appearance, their 
authors could have made their permanent contributions to the restate- 
ment and re-solution of the problems of thought and life and investiga- 
tion of reality without fixating them in consistent systems at all. That 
in order to give their new or refurbished weapons of science play we 
must take them out of the dim and cob webbed armory and try them 
directly on the green wood of contemporary life and fact. 

Thus it is the method of Descartes — the method that he formulated, 
perhaps, more than that which he used — and the great principle of extri- 
cating the mechanism of nature from the — shall we say ? — camouflage of 
finality, so that it could be seen for what it is and made to give an account 
of itself otherwise than thru the medium of texts and MSS both sacred 
and profane, or that of a magic whose presuppositions and assumptions 
were well-nigh as prejudicial; — it is these elements, even more than the 
mathematico-metaphysical ideal of the system as such, that constitute 
the epoch-making Cartesianism. Dualism may not be desirable, any 
more than any other ism, and the postulate that there subsist two sub- 

14 



stances, that is, two simple, irreducible, unanlyzable, mutually exclusive 
and utterly disparate kinds of reality, may be, and probably is, forever 
unverifiable. You may believe it ; you probably never will know it. But 
if some such theory will serve to disentangle the natural from the super- 
natural and enable thinkers and investigators to see the former in its 
intrinsic character, while taking for granted, ignoring or repudiating the 
latter, as the case may be, why, as instrumental to such result — as indis- 
pensable, it may be, one can live on terms with dualism — as a working 
hypothesis. One might live quite as charitably with some sort of monism, 
if it yielded the same kind and degree of emancipation. What Descartes' 
dualism did was to make modern science possible. But even tho we may 
say it was true — then, we are not obliged to acknowledge the doctrine as 
a permanent contribution. 

There is however another way of viewing the aspiration to consistency 
or systematic completeness on the part of speculative thinkers; just in 
proportion to the importance of the great discovery or renovation or 
innovation which is destined to become a monument in the history of phi- 
losophy, it will be seen to have a general implication for the principles of all 
departments of reflective thought. And the attempt to work out these 
implications becomes the obvious preoccupation of the thinker. That is to 
say that the epoch-making discoveries in philosophy are all revolutions in 
what is called methodology. Hence they involve in greater or less degree 
the recasting of the whole of abstract science. And we may observe in 
passing that discoveries in the scientific field strictly so-called may indi- 
rectly bring about this situation; and if that be so, and we may assume 
that the special sciences will never be "completed/' then philosophy, how- 
ever closely it may approximate scientific method, will never itself be 
finished and Othello's occupation gone. 

Not only are the great discoveries orientations, which demand general 
readjustment, but their soundness will be tested by their applicability in 
all fields, and the genius of their authors will be judged by their ability 
to make this application — with consistency. To be a discoverer, a pioneer, 
in philosophy then, is to discover at the same time a vocation as a syste- 
matic philosopher. So that while we may judge, as we often do, that 
most of the systems are, as such, rather more interesting than valuable, 
or true, we cannot cavil at the sense of mission, of vocation, on the part 
of their creators. Their creators! You have perchance formed one of 
a group pausing on their way along the mountain road, or seacliffs of 
Maine, or say a bridge in Venice, to watch a painter at work. Here is 
something more than construction, greater than the mastery of instru- 
ments ; a mechanism is at work, but its product is expression ; with these 
pigments and delicate brushes of camelshair the artist is fixating there 
on the small stretch of canvas a mysterious blend of himself and nature, 
a something intangible but spiritual, significant. He is a creator, and 

15 



tout le monde stops to glance at his handiwork, which in some strange 
way means more to many of them than the scene of which it is superficially 
but the miniature replica. The picture is in a sense the man; ar.d no 
sooner are we fallen under the spell of the former than the latter becomes 
the object of an even stronger interest; we are now fascinated by the 
painter and long to know him. 

Similarly our interest in the great philosophies becomes progressively 
more humanistic. It ceases to be so important that the system is the 
monument of an inconsequential consistency, or that it reveals the limi- 
tations at once of the principle it exploits and the mind that conceived it. 
It is a work of art, of creative genius, to be appreciated ; to inspire in its 
integrity, as well as make a fragmentary contribution. It is their creators 
that count. And the more familiar we become, if haply we ever do become 
familiar, with this or that system, the more they become like old palaces 
or churches ; vaguely they seem to surround and cover us, while thru their 
windows old and storied seems to fall a light of other days. And at 
length, becoming at home in the past, we begin to apprehend the presence 
of the prince or the god; personality illumines and explains and unifies, 
and brings the air of hospitality. We like to conjure up the architecture 
for the sake of getting en rapport with the fellow-creature who called it 
all into existence. 

We have become familiar, at least verbally, with the historical method 
in the history of philosophy, but judging by certain reviews of new his- 
tories of philosophy offered during the last ten years, the method as 
exemplified is not all that could be desired. Observing moreover the 
rather vague and ill-defined interest of the average sort of students of the 
subject, it may occur to one that our historical method might with ad- 
vantage be modified in the direction of a biographical method. This 
would require little but a shifting of emphasis from the epoch to the 
author and probably an alteration in the relative proportion of historical 
and expository matter. The greater quantity of the former would give 
scope for the biographical emphasis to be made effective; a chance to 
get a powerful delineation of the thinker limned upon a background 
sufficiently ample and enriched with detail to make a realistic impression. 
Moreover, as to the expository matter; — there might well be less than 
usual of this, and more, much more, direct quotation from the sources — 
the work or works of the philosophers themselves. This would encour- 
age the student in that too rare indulgence, the consultation of the pri- 
mary sources, or at any rate their English versions. Such discreet quo- 
tation would acquaint the student with the fact that the main principles 
of a system of thought may be reduced to a rather small compilation of 
passages, if one only knew how to go about it. In the presence of such 
exhibits, with their connections concisely indicated, the interest of the 
student would be aroused and the impulse to know more about the con- 

16 



text should follow "as the night the day." In a word, why not have 
the history of philosophy written not so much by the distinguished 
expositors of speculative thought ; — let these write expository works, sets 
of lectures, special studies and the like ; — as by scholars whose real inter- 
est is most general and objective. These would presumably give us his- 
tories which would be genuine textbooks serving the only real purpose of 
such works, actually firing the undergraduate mind to investigation under 
the feeling he has, say, in studying a good textbook of science, namely, 
that he knows what he is doing. The ultra-expository kind of books are 
more adapted to advertise the author than to spread the knowledge, much 
less the love, of philosophy. He may gain a reputation without giving 
an understanding, at least where it is most needed. He is sure of the glory 
and excitement of controversy with the philosophical authorities; but 
might well be admonished to use some other medium than the textbook for 
indulgence in this sport of kings. 

This apparent digression may be pardoned for the sake of one for whom 
education was to be the greatest instrument for the gradual perfecting 
of the life of man in society. And for Mill consistency in the sense of 
systematic completeness and perfection could never be a legitimate aspira- 
tion in philosophy. For such a system requires in time the subordina- 
tion and sacrifice of the individual lines of force in human thought, which 
furnish the disintegrating influences out of which must grow reconstruc- 
tion and progress. Nothing was more objectionable to him than a dog- 
matic system pretending to correspond to objective truth. Progress re- 
quired freedom of thought, and that meant convergence, conflict and 
reconciliation of individual convictions. Consensus, in theory and prac- 
tice, was the method ; and this could not be the consensus mediated by an 
academy of immortals. Nor could it be mediated even by a majority. 
How to advance to this real consensus, how to get beyond the domina- 
tion of certain interests, beyond even the mere compromise of interests, is 
the problem of democracy. Dogmatism resembles superstition in that 
while the formulae of beliefs are definite, the ideal objects thereof remain 
intangible and indefinable. One "sees" manifestations which "verify" 
the belief, yet the thing believed in remains beyond the range not only 
of our own individual experience, but of that of any conceivable expe- 
rience. The conviction is a feeling "bearing its reason in itself." Dog- 
matism in the last analysis rests on intuition and on it alone. The possi- 
bility of such truth, and thus grounded, was utterly repugnant to Mill's 
most solemn convictions, stood straight in the pathway of his most conse- 
crated purposes. 

It is very easy to forget or ignore the fact that a logic of experience 
cannot in the nature of the case be made an organon for the revelation of 
objective truth. It is therefore a misuse of logic to go about to prove that 
it is not. Nor does the most strenuous effort to establish the validity of 

17 



the results of an experimental logic justify us in gloating over what we 
deem its failure to realize an aspiration to apodictic certainty. For after 
all, a regressus, infinite but for the intervention of the First Cause, 
stretches ominously back of the premises of the most irreproachable de- 
duction. We may also note that if the empirical logican draws the fire 
of his detractors for an alleged effort to create the "transcendental illu- 
sion/' then the results of the logic of induction must give a remarkable 
impression of verisimilitude. We all have our limitations, but we natur- 
ally try to minimize them. A system like Mill's deliberately counts on 
getting along without any kind of Absolute, and that for the better accom- 
plishment of the very purpose it has in view: the realization of an un- 
known and as yet non-existent perfection of social organization thru 
progressive change. "The only system," says Edith Simcox, writing in 
the Contemporary Review soon after Mill's death, — "the only system that 
can last as long as thought, law and human society, is one that begins by 
acknowledging no eternal truths, and is content with the merely historical 
identity of the subject of continuous change." 

In contrast with this point of view, the point of view from which best 
to appreciate Mill's forcefully-purposed thought, whether we fully accept 
for ourselves the standpoint or not, — is this passage from a French review 
of the same period; a writer in the Critique philosophique (perhaps Re- 
nouvier, tho the article is unsigned) sums up in a concluding paragraph 
Stuart Mill's limitations as a philosopher, as follows : "What was lacking 
in Mill, — not in his life ; nothing was lacking In his life, — but in his phi- 
losophy, was the recognition in ethics of a reason, revealer of the Just 
(capital J), superior to feeling; in logic and psychology, of constitutive 
forms of the understanding, superior to empirical associations. Whence 
results, that the unity of feeling and reason operates only as instinct in 
his social views, and that his justness as analyst and thinker was due to his 
abstaining from pressing his metaphysical theories to a conclusion which 
they could not have, — at least on the supposition of no other motives of 
belief than those which he admitted." 

The Gallic grace of this passage makes us shrink from its exegesis. It 
was truly a fundamental lack, — that Mill was not a neo-Kantian or neo- 
criticist of the contemporary French school ; that he had not adopted as the 
cornerstone of his philosophic edifice the very principle that was to him 
anathema. And it is almost fulsome to commend him for not pressing 
his theories to conclusions most definitively ruled out by his own logic. 

But let us return to our orientation. For Mill, experimental method, in 
thought and in act, was not repugnant to logic, not even to rigorous logic ; 
neither was such method tainted with scepticism. Not to have beliefs, 
ardent convictions, and not to work hard for the good — however difficult 
to envisage — of mankind, under their inspiration, was the most contempti- 
ble failure of vocation. Says Edith Simcox in the same review quoted 

18 



above, 'That immoral scepticism, or rather imbecility of judgment, which 
hesitates to build upon convictions sincerely held because they may after 
all prove to be erroneous, met with no sanction from him, either in prac- 
tice or theory. To act in candor and good faith, undismayed by the inevit- 
able prospect of blundering, is as necessary a step towards the discovery 
of truth, as to reason according to established canons, tho the human brain 
is liable to fallacy, and incapable of attaining absolute certitude. And tho 
it may be given to few to succomb as seldom as Mr. Mill to those two 
accidents of human infirmity, we may at least learn from him not to lose 
the fruit of what knowledge we have, by an ill-timed reference to such as 
may be reserved for later generations." 

Any modern discussion of the so-called problem of freedom turns on an 
examination of the terms cause, law, necessity, and freedom itself ; but the 
concept of law is the crux of the matter, and the criticism of it will be 
seen to involve the other terms and clear the whole situation. The analysis 
of the notion of law in the political sense and with reference to the idea 
of justice may serve us here as a starting-point. The following is a pass- 
age translated from Dumont's version of Bentham's treatise on Legis- 
lation : 

"The primitive sense of the word Law, is the vulgar sense, that is, the 
will of a lawgiver. The law of nature is a mode of expression : Nature 
is pictured as a being, to whom one attributes such or such a disposition, 
and this is called figuratively Law. In this sense, all the general inclina- 
tions of men, all those which appeared to exist independently of human 
societies, and which must have preceded the establishment of political and 
civil laws, are called the law of nature. Here is the true sense of this 
word." The purpose of the writer need not concern us here, but the 
analysis suggests at once how the modern usage of the same expression 
to designate the foundationstone of modern science brings to conscious- 
ness in the majority of minds traces more or less distinct of its primitive 
meaning. Now since cause is, in the simplest and least prejudiced terms, 
an operation of natural law, it too carries with it what the author of the 
above analysis would call (if we dare use such a discredited formula) an 
"inseparable association" suggestive of the power of legislating will. 
Again it is seen that necessity is the very imposition of such will in actu ; 
or for more sophisticated minds, a metaphysical real which coerces that 
very will itself, just as 'anangche' controls Zeus. Finally, in freedom we 
find the confusion resulting from primitive association culminating in a 
complete inversion of the connotation belonging to the term in its scienti- 
fic context; instead of that freedom of functioning and self-realization 
arising from perfect mechanical adjustment "free" from all extra-natural 
sabotage, the term insists on whispering to us sinister suggestions of an 
alleged "freedom" of caprice, of indifference. It would be parlous free- 
dom indeed which would leave us quite helpless ; for a few minutes after 

19 



starting for a lecture-room we might find ourselves en route for Mars. 
Only a thoroly anthropomorphic omnipotence could relieve us from this 
predicament; but — there's that will again; we land in theological deter- 
minism ! 

And that is just what has happened — to freedom. As tho the burden 
of its "primitive meaning" connected with pre-civil law were not enough, 
this precious word became further charged with the duty of vindicating 
itself against a theological doctrine of necessity in the guise of predestina- 
tion. The facts are too familiar to need more than the briefest mention. 
There was a pretty strong flavor of this particular conception in Augus- 
tine, explainable by his favorite obsession, the divine omnipotence, corre- 
lated with omnisience ; — implying foreknowledge, implying predestination. 
Then the most metaphysical and scholastically inclined of the Protestant 
reformers and divines developed the doctrine, not shrinking from its most 
revolting implications. One practical use it served was as a weapon 
against the Catholic miracles, all post-apostolic instances of this type of 
divine intervention being repudiated by Protestants generally. Theologi- 
cal determinism had upon these somewhat the same sort of corroding 
effect as modern scientific determinism upon similar beliefs. 

But it was unfortunate that predestination seemed to blend with natural 
law, thus confusing necessity, the invariable coupling of definite condi- 
tions with specific phenomena, with that "mysterious compulsion" so 
revolting to Mill and to all other so-called "necessitarians" who accept 
science. According to this conception necessity is overshadowed by divine 
will, projecting and so fixating the future, towards which man can only 
move along trails already blazed, but from which the stumblingblocks are 
not removed, — tho for the elect they become for the moment stepping- 
stones. Deeply ingrained in the popular notion of natural law, it leads 
to the passionate rejection of the latter, as being the order of our volitions 
as of a part of a natural world, and the eager acceptance of an irrational 
and indefensible theory of so-called freewill, whose self-contradictoriness 
they ignore. What their soul really loathes, did they but know it, is not 
natural law, but predestination ; and in this we may well extend them our 
sympathy. 

Necessity in this moral sense is substituted for that of the certainty, 
order and permanence of law. Indeed natural law may be regarded as the 
conception of the permanent amid the flux, for which the thinker has 
sought as for the philosophers' stone. It is a modern monism, a principle 
of unity, without the disadvantage of being substance or stuff ; it is nearer 
to reality than any such conceptions. The science of natural law is ideally 
comprehensive, and gives permanence without the help of the supernat- 
ural, certainty without dogma or faith, substituting knowledge for belief, 
so that certitude and truth are one. 

Mill resolved on attacking Hamilton's philosophy because in the writ- 

20 



ings of one of the ablest of his followers, as Mill himself says, "his pe- 
culiar doctrines were made the justification of a view of religion which I 
hold to be profoundly immoral — that it is our duty to bow down in worship 
before a Being whose moral attributes are affirmed to be unknowable 
by us and to be perhaps extremely different from those which, when we 
are speaking of our fellow-creatures, we call by the same name." Fur- 
ther light is thrown on this resolve by another passage in the Autobio- 
graphy, in which the type of philosopher exemplified by his father, and, 
tho less narrowly, by himself, is contrasted with the school represented 
by Hamilton. "There is a natural hostility between him and a philosophy 
which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circum- 
stances and association and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of 
human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite 
doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature 
and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason." 

But we all know that the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Phi- 
losophy was not the first occasion of Mill's subjecting to his notable 
powers of analysis the problem of freedom, or as he denominates it, 
under protest as regards the second term, Freedom and Necessity. Not- 
withstanding the singular good fortune which brought him to manhood 
without dogmatic bias with respect to religious truth, there came a time 
when the problem of the freedom of the will gripped him in a very 
orthodox way. Quite commonplace indeed was the confusion of thought 
which for a time made the idea of volition controlled by character and 
character by circumstances a veritable "incubus." Then and there he 
thought it out, and briefly records the resolution in the memoirs. This 
solution, which required no material revision, is set forth with accus- 
tomed clearness in the Logic. But we derive a greater human interest 
f*om a study of his chapter on the same subject in the Examination, 
where a system of philosophy which he deemed as vicious as it was fallac- 
ious, affords a foil, and wherein we feel a certain storminess that sweeps 
his philosophic calm. 

Having indicated, with his own help, something of the speculative char- 
acter of Mill's protagonist, or, more exactly, of his system, for Hamilton 
had now no further need of mundane philosophy; — its author depre- 
cated an attack made only under a strong sense of duty; — and having 
noted that the problem of freedom had caused a youthful spiritual crisis 
in Mill's own life; let us now pass on to examine the Examiner. Accord- 
ing to Mill, Hamilton makes the existence of God depend on the postulate 
of a moral will, which in turn depends on our being moral agents, i.e., 
on freewill. This makes these supposedly necessary doctrines indispen- 
sable to each other, instead of being independently demonstrable. Of this 
kind of evidence Mill sharply observes, "The eager attempts of almost 
every metaphysical writer to create a religious prejudice in favor of the 

21 



theory he patronizes, are a very serious grievance in philosophy. ... I 
might warn the defenders of religion, of the danger of sacrificing in turn 
every one of its evidences to some other." He also points out that freewill 
is placed by its advocates in contrast with necessity as identified with 
materialism crassly conceived. He shows the illegitimacy of this, and 
illustrates his point by citing the cases of religious necessitarians who are 
spiritualists — Luther and the Reformers, Calvin and the school of Ed- 
wards, Leibniz, Condillac, Brown. 

"But," says he, "to confound necessity with materialism, tho an histori- 
cal and psychological error, is indispensable to Sir W. Hamilton's argu- 
ment, which depends for all its plausibility on the picture he draws of a 
God subject to a brute necessity of a purely material character. For if 
the necessity predicated of human actions is not a material, but a spiritual 
necessity; if the assertion that the virtuous man is virtuous necessarily 
only means that he is so because he dreads a departure from virtue more 
than he dreads any personal consequence; there is nothing absurd or in- 
vidious in taking a similar view of the Deity, and believing that he is 
necessitated to will what is good, by the love of good and detestation of 
evil which are in his own nature." 

The next point is, that no distinction is made by Hamilton and others 
between determinism, which Mill calls "a fairer term," and necessity, or 
even fatalism. Further, while admitting, in harmony with a certain par- 
tiality for the design argument, that we may base our presumption of a 
divine intelligence on the existence of natural phenomena, we are not jus- 
tified in taking the effects of our minds on things and the conditions and 
laws governing those relations, as types of the Absolute which is unknow- 
able and inconceivable — as Hamilton thinks God is. "And," he adds, 
"tho I do not acknowledge the obligation of believing what can neither 
be known nor conceived, as little can it be admitted that the divine will 
cannit be free unless ours is so ; any more than that the divine intelligence 
cannot know the truths of geometry by intuition, because we learn them 
from Euclid." He thus disposes of Sir William Hamilton's attempt to 
prove "that one who disbelieves freewill has no business to believe in a 
god." 

Having thus pictured this curious scaffolding for the throne of God, 
resting upon the affirmation by man of his own freedom, on which again 
is superposed the postulate of a moral order of the universe, Mill turns 
his attention to a favorite logical device of the intuitionists intended to 
exhibit man as forced to the assertion of his freedom as something more 
than a statement of fact. This device consisted in presenting two contra- 
dictory inconceivables, and arguing that, so far from being false because 
both inconceivable one must necessarily be true because the other being 
contradictory to it must necessarily be false. You have then merely to 
discover a preponderance of probability — and choose. A theoretical, or a 

22 



moral, demand will answer for the basis of this probability ; and there is 
of course no objection to two moral demands demanding each other! 
The more the merrier. It is curious to note in this connection that Mill 
was by no means willing to concede the impossibility of the inconceivable. 
Furthermore, being somewhat pre-Darwinian, tho not altogether unevolu- 
tionary, Mill in his logical doctrine of "kinds" seems to approximate the 
scholastic notion of species; he also doubted whether the so-called uni- 
formity of nature reigned in the interstellar spaces, while late in life he 
used to write at some length to Prof. Bain about his difficulties with the 
conservation (not the conversion) of force, — for him a much harder nut 
to crack than the conservation of matter. 

Sir Leslie Stephen explains the predilection of Hamilton for this bal- 
ancing of inconceivables as due to his extraordinary interest in the antino- 
mies of Kant. Hamilton thought all such oppositions were antinomies, 
and called them such, not noticing it would seem that the Kantian antino- 
mies are disclosed only in the realm of the cosmological argument, and do 
not apply, or rather have no analogy in the ontological proofs. However 
Mill quotes this typical passage from the Lectures: "How, therefore, I 
repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or god, we are utterly unable 
speculatively to understand. But the scheme of freedom is no more 
inconceivable than the scheme of necessity. ... As equally unthinkable, 
the two schemes are thus theoretically balanced. But practically, our con- 
sciousness of the moral law, which without a moral liberty in man would 
be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive preponderance to the doctrine 
of freedom over the doctrine of fate ( !). We are free in act, if we are 
accountable for our actions. " It is in his criticism of the points included 
in this passage that J. S. Mill's philosophy of the moral-religious problem 
of freedom is exhibited in its main aspects. 

He begins by assuming tentatively Hamilton's point of view, that the 
terms of the alternative are alike unthinkable — "concede to him the co- 
equal inconceivability of the conflicting hypotheses, an uncaused com- 
mencement, and an infinite regress"; that is to say, these expressions are 
the logical counterparts of a "free" volition, and a naturally caused voli- 
tion. The "scheme of freedom" versus the "scheme of necessity." Nor 
does he stay to examine Hamilton's position that the inconceivable may 
however not be impossible "by the laws of the universe" ; that one of the 
opposed two incomprehensibles may from its "nature" seem certainly true. 
But he raises the question of what justification the philosopher has in 
choosing to assign the one inconceivable hypothesis as the explanation of 
the one class of phenomena, those of the will — volitions, and the other 
inconceivable hypothesis to account for all other phenomena in man and 
nature. For the evidence to which he appeals in both cases is identical — 
experience ; it is the fact of freedom that weighs the balance in favor of 
construing moral phenomena on the hypothesis of an unthinkable moral 

23 



liberty ; it is the experience of an "invariable sequence" between event and 
antecedents that makes the protagonist of freewill a determinist in his 
interpretation of natural phenomena other than volitions. 

For the sequence is all that experience discloses, — "that wherever and 
whenever that union of antecedents exists, the event does not fail to 
occur." Experience does not reveal any causal nexus, as Sir William, 
with most philosophers of the age, admits in disclaiming a principle of 
"sufficient reason." "Any must in the case, any necessity," adds Mill, 
"other than the unconditioned universality of the fact (he means "invari- 
ability," we may guess), we know nothing of." 

Now in the case of natural phenomena, the a posteriori 'does', "tho not 
confirmed by an a priori 'must', decides our choice between the two incon- 
ceivables." If then there are moral events which disclose constant rela- 
tions of sequence with definite moral antecedents, why may we not infer 
that the very same "inconceivable" determination by natural law governs 
moral phenomena, acts of will, as admittedly operates in all other realms of 
phenomena? Is not the evidence the same? For, as Mill sums it up, "a 
volition is a moral effect, which follows the corresponding moral causes 
as certainly and invariably as physical effects follow their physical causes. 
Whether it must do so, I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant, be 
the phenomena moral or physical ; and I condemn, accordingly, the word 
Necessity as applied to either case. All I know is, that it always does." 

But Sir William does not identify the "fact" of moral liberty with this 
type of empirical account. His thesis is rather the "consciousness" of 
freedom than the "experience" of it, — or, (for he is not free from 
doubt) consciousness of something that implies freedom. "If this is 
true," says Mill, "our internal consciousness tells us one thing, and the 
whole outward experience of the human race tells us another." He 
thinks the problem for philosophy is more difficult than Hamilton was 
aware. Consciousness has not merely to choose between solutions of more 
or less equivalent weight, but to judge between "herself and a complete 
Induction from experience." We might decide a priori for "conscious- 
ness," if anyone knew what it is ! — when its connotations run the gamut 
from sensationalism (or even scepticism) to absolute idealism. And 
the Absolute is exactly what Hamilton does not mean by "consciousness." 

The solution is found by distinguishing two questions to which the 
respective yes and no are answered by experience and consciousness. 
That is, in natural phenomena outside of volitions experience reveals 
determination by natural laws, as Hamilton holds with the Necessitar- 
ians. But Mill, filing another protest against "necessity," and with the 
proviso that natural law simply means invariable uniformities and (knowl- 
edge being complete) predictable sequences, and that there is no sense 
of compulsion by any form of will, supports the affirmation of the Necessi- 
tarians (so-called) that experience shows an exactly analogous determina- 

24 



tion of the human will by natural causes or conditions. This is the yes 
of experience to the thesis of determinism, to which 'consciousness' is 
alleged by Sir William to say 'no.' But the noble philosopher disregards 
the empirical testimony in so far as relating to the phenomena of man's 
will. According to his thesis 'consciousness' says 'no' when interro- 
gated as to the natural determination of the will. On the contrary it 
says, man is conscious of the freedom of his will. But what it really says 
no to is a "different question," Mill points out, than the one to which 
experience replies (again according to Mill and the determinists) "yes." 
What consciousness says no to is the question, Are acts of human will 
necessitated, or obligated, to be what they are, and no other, by an Asia- 
tic kismet, or mysterious and inscrutable fate, or by virtue of a theocratic 
predestination, either or both which act as themselves, however meta- 
physically conceived — that is, whatever may be thought about the inmost 
reality or being of either fate or 'Providence,' — act as themselves free 
agents, unconditioned by any law or principle intelligible to the mind of 
man? 

But — if we appreciate the meaning of Mill's criticism — Sir William 
does not thus discriminate types of what is still called by thinkers of 
like tendencies, "necessity." Nay, more — not only is the realm of nat- 
ural law haunted by a phantom will implied by this word, — a will mani- 
festly capricious, even utterly immoral, if natural phenomena are (as 
they must be under such a presupposition) judged by human ethical 
standards; — but the noble philosopher fails, as we have seen, to distin- 
guish so-called necessity from so-called "materialism." This is an error 
common to those who experience a moral or religious recoil from what 
they regard as confusing the natural man and the spiritual man. It is 
an error however into which not all necessitarians or determinists fall; 
although such spiritual determinists are chargeable with the theological 
misinterpretation of the facts of natural law. 

It is a pure assumption then, thinks Mill, that consciousness denies 
what experience affirms in regard to natural law as determining the will. 
This contradiction is only possible when any theory subsuming the 
phenomena of the will under law is confused with religious conceptions 
(theistic) or mystical conceptions (fatalistic) of determinism; when om- 
nipotence, or destiny, and not nature, is the seat of that law. 

He then inquires further into this alleged "consciousness" of freewill. 
It is difficult to "ascertain what it is that consciousness certifies; . . . 
whether we are conscious only of moral responsibility, in which freewill is 
implied (according to Hamilton), or directly conscious of freewill." It 
appears Hamilton was far from settled on the point. But the direct 
consciousness of freedom is often maintained ; with what propriety is the 
term "consciousness" employed in such a connection? 

We are not conscious of ability to do things — as for example, right 

' 25 



or wrong; to do or not to do at will. We are conscious only of what we 
do (are doing), or feeling. What we can do we know, and that only 
from experience. This knowledge is misnamed "consciousness." "But 
it does not derive any increase of authority from being misnamed; its 
truth is not supreme over, but depends on, experience." Such an al- 
leged consciousness must submit to the acid test of experience; if it 
does not stand this test it is a delusion. 

But again, what is this conviction — call it consciousness or belief? 
Just what is it that we are convinced of? It is not the freedom of 
indifference. In case of any accomplished choice we can say, I could 
have done the opposite, but only — if I had preferred. You mean to include 
in the preference the consequence, or the conformity with morality, that 
may cause one to inhibit a course otherwise and in itself preferable. But 
that which is actually preferred, whether for the satisfaction of desire 
or the satisfaction of principle, is what will be done — barring accidents. 

"I therefore," says Mill forcibly, "dispute altogether that we are con- 
scious of being able to act in opposition to the strongest present desire or 
aversion," A man, whether good or bad, acts in conformity with his 
strongest desires. It is a question of the relative strength of the desire 
to do right and the aversion to doing wrong. Virtue is the combined 
strength of this desire and aversion. And on the possibility of this state 
of mind is based moral government; while moral education, in the wide 
sense of social experience, is the discipline adapted to produce it. Such 
education consists in training the impulses, with the view to making the 
desires what they should be. 

Not to pursue this topic of moral education, which involves the problem 
of an ethical standard and set of principles, the point to emphasize here is 
Mill's rejection of the "figment of a direct consciousness of the freedom 
of the will." Is it then that this freedom is implied in a direct "con- 
sciousness of moral responsibility" ? — which Sir William claims, either as 
an alternative, or as a correlative and reinforcement to the direct con- 
sciousness of freedom itself. The dependence of moral responsibility 
on freedom is often an opnion determining the views of necessitarians ; for 
example, the Owenites, who, recognizing the control of volitions by natural 
causes, infer the injustice of punishment, for which they substitute "moral 
suasion"; and they accordingly emphasize education of habits and dis- 
positions tending towards those virtues which they clearly recognize, and 
engendering that strong sense of moral distinctions which characterizes 
them. 

The confusion of thought which makes natural causation of voluntary 
acts seem inconsistent with accountability for them is more than a verbal 
fallacy, yet such a fallacy contributed to cause it. Can we speak of a 
"consciousness of moral responsibility"? Well, what is responsibility? 
Either, the expectation of penalty (social or supernatural), or, the sense 

26 



of guilt — the consciousness that we deserve punishment. But can we be 
conscious of liability to punishment ? We believe ourselves liable to pen- 
alties for certain types of behavior, thru some kind of experience, educat- 
ing us to the belief. The result of this experience — the sense of liability — 
is not consciousnss, says Mill ; and by any name, does not depend for its 
existence on being inferred from the spontaneity of volition. Punishment 
and guilt, like moral evil, are conceptions not incompatible with — even 
conspicuous by association with — systems of theological or mystical 
determinism. Obviously neither predestination nor fatalism exclude these 
notions. You are foreordained to sin and to incur eternal reprobation; 
you are destined to err — and to suffer the consequences — the inevitable 
consequences — of your error. The belief therefore that we shall be 
made accountable for our actions, requires no support from freedom; 
what does require it, that which may be deemed to presuppose freewill, 
perhaps, is the conviction that this accountability is just, "that guilt de- 
serves punishment." The crucial question is, does this conviction depend 
upon the hypothesis of freewill? 

The empirically grounded belief that we shall suffer for wrongdoing, 
does not need this hypothesis ; such belief is not "consciousness of moral 
responsibility" however. It does not involve the ethical problem neces- 
sarily. The mere recogntion of a distinction between right and wrong, 
itself known thru experience, will suffice. Not only does a man know 
that he will be made accountable by his fellows, but when he is in an 
irresponsible office he tends to throw off this feeling of accountability. 
And again, men commonly have a "wholesome 1 * sense of liability to 
"superiors," accompanied by an unmoral or immoral attitude towards 
"inferiors." 

Finally, it should be always remembered that the "highest sense ... of 
the worth of goodness and the odiousness of its opposite, is perfectly 
compatible with the most exaggerated form of Fatalism." If then the 
experimental knowledge of accountability and the sense of moral distinc- 
tions neither one requires the hypothesis of freewill, does the other sense, 
of punishment deserved — does "moral responsibility" in the other mean- 
ing, of which we are said to have a "consciousness," — does this any more 
depend on freewill? It is the questoin of the legitimacy of retributive 
justice, — punishment. It is said that to punish a man for what he cannot 
help is unjust. But what if the expectation of punishment is the only 
means whereby he is enabled to help doing it? This will be the usual 
case with persons of evil disposition. They will do wrong if they think 
they can with impunity, but usually refrain if the conviction is strong that 
they will suffer for it. 

Says Mill, "the question deemed to be so puzzling is, how punishment 
can be justified if men's actions are determined by motives, among which 
motives punishment is one. A more difficult question would be, how can 

27 



it be justified if they are not so determined. Punishment proceeds on 
the assumption that the will is governed by motives. If punishment had 
no power of acting on the will, it would be illegitimate, however natural 
might be the inclination to inflict it. Just so far as the will is supposed 
free, that is, capable of acting against motives, punishment is disap- 
pointed of its object, and deprived of its justification." 

Medicinal punishment — for the offender's benefit, and protective pun- 
ishment — for safeguarding the rights of society, are considered justifiable 
on necessitarian grounds. These are the two aspects of punishment. 
The power to punish, used for aggression against individual rights, is 
unjust. But "if it be possible to have just rights, it cannot be unjust to 
defend them." And justice of such punishment does not depend on a 
doctrine of the will. 

To sum up the argument to this point, Mill's contention is, that given 
our feeling of moral distinctions derived from education and experience — 
the former being but a narrower term for the latter, and given our knowl- 
edge of accountability (whether to a god or to society) similarly derived, 
we also have, based upon these, a knowledge that the punishment of 
wrongdoing will be just — "just" namely, as the penalty of the violation of 
right or rights. To disprove this would require the positive evidence 
that this sense of accountability and recognition of the justice of punish- 
ment precede all experience of punishment itself. 

Now this empirical knowledge is identical, thinks Mill, with the alleged 
primitive "consciousness of moral responsibility." And he notes that, 
according to Sir W. Hamilton's famous "law of parsimony," "we ought 
not to assume any mental phenomenon as an ultimate fact (meaning 
empirically unconditioned), which can be accounted for by other known 
properties of our mental nature." From this doctrine Mill draws these 
corollaries: "It is impossible to assert the justice of punishment for 
crimes of fanaticism on any other ground than its necessity for the attain- 
ment of a just end." "The merely retributive view of punishment derives 
no justification from the doctrine I support. But it derives quite as little 
from the freewill doctrine." That is, all just punishment is directed 
to operation on the will, thru supplying or modifying motivation. If a 
man's conduct were beyond the reach of motives — indifferent to good or 
bad, restraint would be justified, but not infliction of pain. 

Mill thinks association accounts for the "natural sentiment" of the 
justice of punishment as retaliation or reprisal. He quotes Hamilton's 
remark that the "associations of thought are mistaken for the connections 
of existence," and adds that this is most true where the emotions are 
involved; since it does not usually occur to one that "feelings" require 
justifying, except as a practical necessity may arise for explaining them 
to another who does not participate in them. He does not think any 
"metaphysical objection" will make any determinist "feel" punishment to 

28 



be unjust, in case he have committed a crime, not under any form of 
duress recognized by law as an extenuating circumstance, or the influence 
of anything more than "natural necessity." He will recognize that the 
penalty existed for the very purpose of giving his will a set against doing 
the deed. He will recognize the evil in his motives, as well as the defects 
in his "mental disposition," or character, which kind of defects are meant 
by the term "fault." No doctrine of the will is needed to make us feel 
that we ought to overcome our faults, "and our estimate of the merit 
rises, in exact proportion to the greatness of the obstacle which the moral 
feeling proved strong enough to overcome." 

The true doctrine of causation of human actions does not resemble 
fatalism, Mill says, "in any of its moral or intellectual effects." He dis- 
tinguishes two kinds of fatalism: that of the Oedipus "holds that our 
actions do not depend upon our desires," but upon destiny, against which 
strife is meaningless. The other, that "our actions are determined by 
our will, our will by our desires, and our desires by the joint influence of 
the motives presented to us and of our individual character; being made 
for us and not by us, we are not responsible for it, nor for the actions 
it leads to, and should in vain attempt to alter them." 

But the true doctrine of causation points to the conclusion that we are 
"under a moral obligation to seek the improvement of our moral charac- 
ter." This, because our conduct and character are both exhibited from 
a natural point of view as under control within limits ; and if we cannot 
alter our conduct because of our character, we must endeavor to alter 
the latter. Perceiving these conditions, realizing the alternatives, enter- 
taining the new motives, making the effort of orientation, — all these are 
not merely so many effects of a concourse of antecedent causes or condi- 
tions, but are at the same time so many causal or conditioning factors in 
the present situation at any given moment, will be so at the next and 
at every subsequent one, and may become or be made the determining 
factors in the future conditions. 

We might emphasize in connection with Mill's distinction of the incon- 
gruous fatalism of popular interpretations of determinism, another dis- 
tinction — that between the conception of altering nature and that of 
controlling the impersonal forces of nature . We can, in ourselves, with- 
out resorting to a vicious dualism, distinguish forces not belonging as it 
were to personality, and the very handling of which gives character in a 
very fundamental sense its type. 

Mill notices that Kant avoids a consistent determinism by a "change 
of venue" ; he distinguished two kinds of voluntary acts, those which are 
the consequence of motives or character, and so determined by them; 
and those which are of the nature of efforts to reform our character 
itself. These latter are "free." But Mill refuses this compromise, and 
regards the moral effort as equally due to antecedent causes. Thus with 

29 



perfect knowledge efforts and other acts alike would be predictable, but 
this would put upon them no mysterious constraint, compulsion or obliga- 
tion to be what they will be. "Necessity (in so far as admissible) can 
mean no more "than the abstract possibility of being foreseen," . . . 
"simple invariability of sequence.' , 

Mill stops to answer seriously freewill metaphysicians maintaining 
that we can will when we have no strongest desire, or otherwise would 
be like the asinus Buridani and remain transfixed in indecision forever; 
altho he is perhaps rather priggishly surprised that any thinker should 
do so. It seems that Reid and Mansel, tho not Hamilton himself, had 
gravely undertaken the solution of this dilemma. It is only requisite to 
give a natural aspect to the situation. A state of deliberation must end 
in fatigue and inattention; then an accidental renewal of attention fixed 
for the instant on only one haystack, plus hunger, which has not decreased 
as we may suppose, equals — a swift decision ! But the situation, if true 
to life at all, would argue for freewill for the ass ! — and, says Mill, per- 
haps he has it. 

Again, Mill objects to Dean Mansel's (but not Hamilton's) reduction 
of the formula that acts are determined by the strongest motive, to an 
identical proposition. For determinism does not refer here to the strong- 
est motive in relation to the will itself ; but rather, in relation to pleasure 
or pain, liking or aversion. Impulses thus first caused become habitual, 
and then "strength of motive" comes to mean completeness of the habitual 
reaction — the working of the association between an idea and a motion. 
But even if ultimately the strength of motives is tested by effect on the 
will, the formula still means more than "the prevailing motive will pre- 
vail"; it means there is a prevailing motive; one which will continue to 
prevail. In other words, it excludes freewill; revealing as it does a 
causal situation. 

Mill, "before leaving the subject," as he says, finally notes that "in its 
coarsest form," that is, the theological form of the doctrine of predestina- 
tion, no normal person, not even a Mohammedan, (or, he might have 
added, a Calvinist), is really oppressed by the doctrine; since the spiritual 
situation is veiled by the natural conditions, and none knows his "destiny." 
It is only when, by the drift which one seems to see in his affairs at 
certain crises, he fancies he has glimpsed the inscrutable purposes of 
Deity, that effort may perchance be paralyzed; that he may take circum- 
stances as an intimation of his fate, and abandon hope "without waiting 
for the result." 

But such inaction is, by the showing of the doctrine itself, presumably 
to defeat the divine purpose. It is Islam, or resignation, misunderstood. 
As John Stuart Mill puts it, "Because something will certainly happen if 
nothing is done to prevent it, they think it will certainly happen whatever 
is done to prevent it: in a word, they believe in Necessity in the only 

30 



proper meaning of the term, — an issue unalterable by human efforts or 
desires." 

Mill apparently would agree with the remark attributed to an American 
philosopher, that he rejected "freedom" because freedom is "unscientific." 
Both dispose of the question by accepting the fundamental hypothesis of 
natural science, invariable law, as universal and necessary. "Before 
leaving the subject" ourselves, it is worth while bringing the discussion- 
it seems to be still a live question — up to date, by giving some account 
of a suggestion by another scholar to whom the remark cited was made. * 

Freedom is not scientific. Reflecting upon this statement, Prof. 
Bush observes that "whether we use the word freedom, or pur- 
pose, or intelligent control, . . . the simple fact is that the idea of 
mechanistic determination is opposed to the idea signified by these words 
and by plenty of others." So then freedom is not scientific, it is true. 

The question asked is, What is it to be "scientific"? The traditional 
answer will serve, — that science looks for causes and seeks to explain. 
If one employ materials or means, he anticipates that they will accomplish 
certain ends in view. If they do not, one is convinced that he has mis- 
takenly used the wrong things. This is the distinction between "formal 
truth" or logical consistency, and "material truth." Logical truth does 
not reveal existence ; but the latter is its own only evidence. And if this 
be so, what is the meaning of the statement of scientific determinism? 

The crucial point is, that this statement is a "dialectical" one, and so 
not "existential." The formula of universal determinism is not a "meta- 
physical discovery." Nor is the term metaphysical obscure enough to 
make this assertion unclear. The scientific formula has a "methodologf- 
cal function"; in a word, it is a working hypothesis and nothing more. 
What can it do, however, but exclude the spontaneous ? This it is, then, 
to be "unscientific." 

Now "freedom" is a fact, observable in experience, and it is hard to 
convince one that it is nevertheless an illusion. And, did we stop here, 
the tables would seem to have been turned, and the victory won for 
freewill. That is, we would have to accept the witness of experience, as 
against a scientific dogma incapable of empirical verification. 

But no, — we want to get rid of an "artificial problem," not merely ar- 
range a new alignment of partisanship. "The spontaneous is the region 
of the uncontrollable," cuts both ways, — in the moral as well as the phy- 
sical sphere. The postulate of freedom, too, is — equally with that of 
universal law — not susceptible of complete induction, verification by 
observation; it too is a working hypothesis. Both are "postulates of 
the practical intelligence." If the necessity is felt for determinism in 
nature, to make control possible, equally will that complex instrument, 

* The account is based on, and quotes fragmentary from, a MS of Prof. 
Bush since printed. 

31 



intelligence, need to be controllable, dependable, in order to do its work, 
to exercise that degree — increasing degree — of control over the environ- 
ment, physical and social, including that portion of the organism itself 
which is distinguishable from intelligence, whose function intelligence is. 

The contrasted facts, that the "principle of causality has been given 
unlimited scope, and that" at the same time "a gratuitous perplexity in 
metaphysics has been piously esteemed," are then seen to be explained by 
the two views seeming both indispensable, and justified by "success in 
promoting," — one, "the conditions . . . favorable to man's existence"; — 
the other, those which are "favorable ... to the realization of his poten- 
tialities." 

Man's limited and rather indefinite freedom is, according to Mill's view, 
a natural thing. Volition is not in any way altered as a fact by being no 
longer attributed to other than natural forces. The regulation of the will 
by natural law gives man control of it, as of one among other natural 
energies or agencies, so that he can employ it reliably in gaining a pro- 
gressive knowledge and control of all other natural objects and processes, 
and use these for his human needs. If we wish to continue the use of 
the terms, like "determinism" (tho it would be better to drop them), we 
may formulate a practical "solution" reconciling freedom with natural 
law. In the first place we may take as true Spinoza's dictum, that nat- 
ural facts are connected by causes which have no reference to their con- 
sequences for mankind. The events are joined by inevitable uniformities 
of relation among natural forces, of which there is no objective, unitary 
system. Man makes the "cosmos"; but there is no fixed order of the 
past, — much less of the future — whose wholly ideal existence is obvious. 
Now when one is choosing a course of action, he is comparing ideas ; not 
standing blindfolded at the "parting of the ways," in the sense of two 
veiled existent "paths," one of which he will inevitably select. How can 
he choose one among actions which have as yet no existence? In order 
to exist an act must have been done. It is the decision, perfectly natural 
of course, under the circumstances, and the result of a succession of 
causal sequences; which, however, had none of them such an end, nor 
indeed any end, in view, — it is the decision that brings one "path" into 
existence. There has been a choice, and a choice is free, — "Hobson's 
choice" being a misnomer ! Psychologically, we can inhibit one idea, and 
the other will tend to realization. And just as a single "moment of con- 
sciousness" is our sole point of contact with reality, so an instant of delib- 
eration and choice is our momentary — but frequently recurring — 
realization of freedom. What is "determined" is, how either choice will 
work out, once taken. This no will can change or affect. Yet even here 
we speak of the details of causal connections ; a man from the standpoint 
of his whole purpose may manipulate variously the known "laws," accord- 
ing to his degree of intelligence, and harness their energies. Experience 

32 



and foresight give an indefinite possibility of control of choice, with a 
view to realize desired results. 

This may be called a "solution" by subsuming freedom under necessity, 
— meaning under law, or invariable uniformity of sequence of antecedents 
and effects. The cause of an effect is nothing but the conditions under 
which it will result or exist. To know causes (from experience) is to 
understand what effects will follow from specific conditions; what effect 
certain actions or behavior will have. Human will itself is a determiner of 
that element of impersonal indeterminateness that exists in man's relation 
to environment ; a result of his capability of affecting and controlling, or 
using it — adapting it to him — which he has in measure, and which is one 
phase of the "adaptation" of organism to environment. For there is 
interaction between these. Therefore, as Prof. Dewey remarked in dis- 
cussion, "the will is the least desirable place in the universe for indeter- 
minism." 



Ill 

JOHN STUART MILL AND POSITIVISM 

"Je ne l'ai jamais vu en personne." 

One may indulge a regret something more than sentimental that John 
Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte never were able to cement "irrevocable- 
ment," as Comte would say, their "sympathie philosophique" by means 
of direct personal association and that complete and frank discussion 
of their views, which a certain formal and diplomatic character insepa- 
rable from a correspondence — especially in French — between distinguished 
persons must inevitably prevent, but which alone could reveal and deter- 
mine the nature, extent and limits of their "convergences" and diver- 
gences. Mill felt in Comte a worthy master without the limitations of a 
Bentham, or indeed of a James Mill. He felt in him a virgin spring of 
intellectual waters capable of fructifying more richly his own thought, 
limited as it was by a certain "secheresse" which he himself recognized. 
Comte was to be a refuge from Philistinism. While Comte seemed to 
discern in Mill a "superior mind," which is to say one capable of appre- 
hending the value and finality of the immense work, whose synthesis 
must needs be perfect, since based, "for the first time," on an adequate 
analysis of social phenomena and a scientific philosophy of history. And 
besides that philosophic sympathy provoked in Mill by the "great synop- 
tic picture" of the past which Comte had painted with a masterly origin- 
ality, Comte saw in him the possibility of that personal sympathy of which 
he stood sadly in need. The detached but unsparing criticism — altho 
everywhere accompanied by a singularly just and impartial appreciation — 

33 



of ideas and institutions, included in the vast sweep of his research and 
speculation every interest, public and private, in society, whether in its 
static or in its dynamic aspect, its "temporal" or its "spiritual powers." 
"Order" and "progress" alike were subjected to his dialectic, the most 
scientifically grounded and impartially motivated, as well as the most 
comprehensive and exhaustive criticism and reconstruction ever under- 
taken. Comte's investigation was unbiased — it was not a polemic, dis- 
closed no partisanships. This detachment from "interests" isolated 
Comte, and his system of "cerebral hygiene" completed the process and 
resulted in wellnigh dissolving the economic foundations of his career. 
This isolation extended to Mme. Comte. Their real relations need not 
concern us; the simple fact was that there was in these no "philosophic 
sympathy," and lack of personal sympathy in time resulted, leading to 
voluntary separation. Comte later found consolation in a platonic devo- 
tion to Mme. Clothilde de Vaux ; with serious consequences to his system, 
if we may trust Mill's judgment, for it led to the important principle 
of the presidency of feeling, — one of the chief grounds of Mill's ultimate 
rejection of the positive polity. The impression made upon Comte and 
upon his thought by this episode is astonishing when we consider that it 
ended sadly with the death of Mme. de Vaux within the space of a year. 
The invention of "altruism," a word coined by Comte, measures this im- 
pression. The motto of the Systeme became "Vivre pour autrui." Comte 
remarks with a certain commonplaceness that the "only happiness is in the 
exercise of the affections" ; and Mill suggests that Comte should know as 
he had found it so "for a whole year." 

The "hygiene cerebrale," practically the renunciation of news of the 
world, gave way before the great expectations aroused by Mill's Logic, 
which appeared somewhat in advance of the sixth and final volume of 
Comte's Cours de philosophie positive. The isolation of Comte resulting 
from this complete devotion to the development of his own thought, and 
from the universality of his criticism had material consequences, as im- 
plied above. It estranged most of the savants, or distinguished special- 
ists, even of France itself, including the representatives of those sciences 
which had reached, according to Comte, the stage of greatest "positivity." 
From these last chiefly the great positive philosopher might seemingly look 
for support based on necessary identity of interest, more than from any 
other class. But Comte indulged in no eulogiums. While recognizing 
with discrimination the character and extent of the positive development 
of each of the sciences, he yet found that all shared in greater or less 
degree two defects; "dispersive speciality," and "theological tutelage." 
That is, the sciences did not understand their mutual interrelation and 
dependence as parts of an organic whole ; and they, even in mathematics, 
still operated more or less with "theological" — or at any rate "metaphy- 
sical" — conceptions. But these were fundamental defects. The classifica- 

34 



tion of the sciences, and their emancipation from the control of pre-scien- 
tific ideas, were crucial points for positivism, and they were principles on 
which Mill was in thorough agreement with Comte. In his Auguste Comte 
and Positivism, in a footnote, Mill says, "The philosophy of the subject 
is perhaps nowhere so well expressed as in the Systeme de politique posi- 
tive (iii, 41) : 'Logically conceived, the order according to which our 
principal theories accomplish their fundamental development results nec- 
essarily from their interdependence. All the sciences may no doubt be 
sketched at the same time, — their practical employment itself requires 
this simultaneous cultivation. But such a preliminary sketch is concerned 
only with the inductions proper to each class of speculations. For this 
inductive effort is capable of furnishing principles adequate only for the 
simplest investigations. Everywhere else adequate principles can be estab- 
lished only by subordinating each class of scientific inductions to the 
whole system of deductions which have been derived from less complex, 
and therefore less dependent fields of inquiry. Thus our different the- 
ories depend for their dogmatic character upon one another, according 
to an invariable order, which must control historically their distinct ap- 
pearance, — the most independent always being capable of earlier develop- 
ment.' ' : (The translation of the passage quoted is by the present 
writer.) The classification of the positive sciences built up by Comte 
upon this principle, was the second great point of philosophic "conver- 
gence", — the first being of course the philosophy of history based on the 
"law of the three stages", — that led Mill to make overtures to Comte. 
And he needed, and so welcomed with sincere effusion, these approaches 
and appreciations of one whom he insisted upon at once identifying as 
an adherent and destined propagandist; — the more eagerly, as these very 
principles estranged from him not only churchmen and (only less) states- 
men, but savants as well. Philosophers might be deemed accustomed to 
doing without the support of one or both of these classes, with the addi- 
tion sometimes of the industrial-capitalists, who usually demand mate- 
rial results of theories before subsidizing the theorist. But to be deprived 
of the countenance of the very group for whom his thought might be 
assumed to have the greatest affinities, — the class best qualified to endorse 
his theories from a practical point of view, and so commend them to 
statesmen and capitalists at least, — this was dangerous isolation indeed ! 

Comte says of this situation, in one of his earlier letters to Mill, "I 
have learned at my own cost, that the scientists would be quite as vindic- 
tive and oppressive as the priests and the metaphysicians, if they should 
(pouvait) ever have the same means. But as far as I am concerned 
their present power is quite sufficient. And the result of my historical 
appraisement leads me of necessity in my sixth volume to attack directly 
the routine system of independent specialization; which impresses me, 
in relation with the total view of modern history, as constituting today, 

35 



especially in France, the chief obstacle to the great philosophical move- 
ment of the XlXth century." 

Again, in one of Comte's earlier letters to Mill occurs a passage which 
illustrates at once his philosophy of science, and the consequent attitude 
towards the scientific world which seems to elucidate the reaction of that 
community to Comte's programme of reorganization. He assaults the 
"present constitution of the scientific world" as follows : "Starting from 
the great scientific impulse given by Bacon and Descartes, inasmuch as 
the method had to undergo its different fundamental elaborations, mathe- 
maticians were bound to have a natural predominance, since positivism 
first came from them. Enunciated as a principle in the XVIIth century, 
and developed as a fact during the following century, it is in our days 
that their provisional preponderance has been completely realized. Now, 
therefore, is precisely the time it should cease, because of the ultimate 
extension of the positive method to the science of man, — first individual, 
then social, — a science which, by its very nature, must certainly again 
become predominant; as it was normally under the theological regime, 
and even later under the metaphysical. The philosophic agitation stirred 
by my work, will have given really only the systematic impulse to that 
new final coordination of scientific forces, henceforth disciplined especially 
by biologists and sociologists ; while mathematicisians and physicists will 
pass in their turn to the second rank." 

If we seek to designate the most fundamental fact which drew Mill and 
Comte together, we shall not be far wrong in judging it to be — a recogni- 
tion of anarchic conditions in society. But this anarchy was for Mill 
primarily economic in its causes, and it was primarily a practical situa- 
tion, in an insular setting, with which he was preoccupied. While for 
Comte the anarchy was intellectual and viewed as uniform throughout 
"Occidental Europe;" and France was simply best prepared to take the 
lead in a universal reorganization of society, for the first time fully 
planned on the basis of a perfected scientific theory. We say "scientific", 
but it must be understood that Comte's method (and Mill's in principle) 
is primarily a sociological method, and that is why it was uncongenial 
to the scientific coteries of the day. The grand aim of the system of 
Comte was precisely to substitute the sociological for the scientific point 
of view, as the only possible solution of the intellectual and social an- 
archy, by concentrating all inquiries and scientific interests in one com- 
prehensive humanistic interest. To speak then of this method as "scien- 
tific" implies that the recognized methods of science as more or less 
developed in the modern age, were to be applied to the study of human and 
social phenomena. That social facts are capable of systematization under 
the "reign of law" — law as "natural" as any other scientific laws — this is 
Comte's fundamental thesis. Social facts are merely more complex 
than in scientific fields other than that that of sociology. Comte's great 

36 



originality consists in his discovery that history and scientific development 
have now furnished sufficient data and principles for the immediate "con- 
stitution" of sociologly as a natural science, — a science which has only 
to be formulated in order to carry its own convincingness and lead at 
once to the "re-constitution of society." "Society" in this context is, 
first, Occidental Europe, and secondarily the civilized world; the back- 
ward peoples remaining under a tutelage far different from any formerly 
known in history, since it will involve no "exploitation" or oppression, but 
will extend distinterested protection and guidance, and provide rapid 
education for membership in the family of mature nations. 

Now it was this method, and the historical "appreciation" upon which 
it was founded, that won Mill's eager adherence. It was this theory 
that he had developed in his own thinking and which underlay his work 
on logic, actually completed before he read the final volume of Comte's 
great work on the Positive philosophy. Mill's work was not revised as 
a result of this reading, for reasons — cordially approved by Comte him- 
self — which are best explained in his own words. "In asking for the work 
all your indulgence, I must point out to you that the first book dates 
essentially from 1829; that the second is a simple reconstruction of a w r ork 
done in 1832, excepting the polemic against the representative of German 
metaphysics, which alone is recent; and that the third itself, where I at 
last enter frankly into the positive method, was done in all most essential 
respects before I had taken cognizance of your great work, even as to its 
first volumes. It is perhaps a circumstance favorable for the originality 
of my philosophical point of view that I did not earlier become acquainted 
with what would exert so great an influence upon my mind. But it is quite 
certain that my book is worth less, although it may perhaps be more 
suitable for the readers it will have." 

But Comte was in no mood to find faults. He read Mill between 
sessions of the inquiry on the part of the authorities of the Polytechnic 
School, which resulted from efforts — ultimately successful — to oust him 
from his position as examiner of candidates for entrance to the school. 
From this ordeal, he says, the work of Mill "agreeably distracted him." 
His reception of it is cordial, not to say expansive. Nothing is further 
from his thoughts than the apprehension of disagreements. "It is not 
in my power, I feel," he writes, "to thank you worthily — at least now — 
for your generous anxiety to render me on every occasion the illustrious 
philosophic justice which you thought my due. This strong expression 
of appreciation, — the first reward of my labor and the most decisive, even 
including all those that I may henceforth expect, — has made upon me a 
profound impression of recognition which will last all my life. For I 
cannot suppose (however you may have utilized my labors) that you were 
in the least obligated, surely, to such a noble and ardent demonstration, — 

37 



which may perchance not be without danger to you, notwithstanding the 
character of your position." 

But the Logic is appreciated for substantial reasons. It is recognized as 
an admirable propagandist document. "You have quite fully realized your 
principal end, by devising a happy and decisive transition from the least 
backward phase of the metaphysical spirit to the veritable positive spirit, — 
whither you will thus lead in your train many excellent intellects upon 
whom my own works can exert almost no influence directly, yet whose 
cooperation in the great philosophic foundation of our century should be- 
come very valuable, on account of the habits of systematic generalization 
derived from their training in metaphysics. This discipline, despite all its 
radical faults, perhaps brings such minds more into relation with the real 
final pont of view, than the cruder independent empiricism of our own 
supposedly positive specialists, upon whom alone I have any special influ- 
ence." This "service" anticipated by Comte, "passager mais capital", as 
he graciously says, — to modern evolution, should not be confined to Eng- 
land, even tho specially adapted for that country. More specifically 
Comte indicates what he means by the supremely useful mediation repre- 
sented to him in a total view of Mill's work. "No other interpreter could 
perhaps adequately sustain that vigorous wisdom which made you so 
felicitously set aside all really metaphysical arguments, without ignoring 
however any natural connections with them that your work disclosed. 
But beyond the invaluable transition you have thus thoroly constructed, 
this really systematic work contains doctrinal chapters important in many 
respects, whose permanent influence will not be limited to this important 
episode. Such is especially your admirable estimate, as clear as it is 
profound, — of the four general modes of elementary induction. And I 
admired even more the convincing exposition with which you concluded 
it, by conducting the reader to the almost spontaneous demonstration 
of the necessary interposition of deductive steps. The spirit of these two 
conclusive chapters is afterwards felicitously reproduced so as to leave 
an indelible impression, in the special consideration of sociological inves- 
tigations. All this certainly forms a genuine whole (ensemble) whose 
essential parts combine without difficulty in producing the effect you had 
chiefly in view." 

And "all this," we may remark, is an intelligent review and real appre- 
ciation by M. Comte. In anything Mill did he looked for the features 
which marked its affinities with his own thought, and regarded all else as 
"provisional" and destined to undergo change with the perfecting of 
Mill's mind. It was a literal fact for Comte that disagreements between 
them were such as the mere logic of positivism must inevitably remove. 
So he goes on in the same letter just quoted, — "As to disagreement, I am 
happy to declare to you that I have sought there in vain for the numerous 
indications your letters seem to announce to me. I must first bar out com- 

38 



pletely, according to the spirit of this great work, all in it that essentially 
belongs only to a transition phase, now completed in the spontaneous 
evolution of your own understanding. Even without your direct explana- 
tion, I should have easily recognized that this whole writing had been not 
only conceived but in greater part executed before my works had at alt 
affected your effort. . . . And you have every reason to congratulate 
yourself today on such an independence, which, while assuring greater 
originality to your conceptions, permits you besides to act more directly 
upon the minds you wish especially to reach. However, under every 
other aspect I have found between our brains (!) a precision of synergy 
even beyond what I expected. For this slow and exhaustive reading has 
shown me only a very small number of philosophic divergences, most 
of them unimportant, of which we shall talk at leisure during the happy 
visit you are allowing me to anticipate . . .," etc. A hope, as we have 
seen, never realized in respect of philosophic agreement or of personal 
intercourse. Under these circumstances no one can say categorically that 
M. Comte was not justified in the hopes he reposed in a personal contact 
with Mr. Mill. But it is certainly doubtful, as the divergences were on 
what soon proved to be fundamental points. Mill has been reproached 
for not seeing this and exposing himself at once to the consequences. 
But this seems to be disregarding certain considerations, as well as being 
a fruitless criticism and probably unjust. It is to leave out of account 
the point of view furnished by Mill's letters to Comte, published only in 
1899; it is to disregard the expansive protestations of Comte, and to 
ignore the amenities of such a remarkable correspondence altogether. 

The spirit of Comte in regard to disagreement has been typically illus- 
trated ; it was he and not Mill who minimized their divergences. Mill first 
mentions them, — deprecatingly, as was natural and proper, — and he 
does so very early in the correspondence. And not only does he warn 
Comte (with the result we have seen ) about the shortcomings of his 
Logic, but with characteristic sincerity, as well as clarity and brevity 
(Comte, by the way, furnished from three-fifths to three- fourths of the 
actual bulk of the correspondence), Mill gives a definite account of all 
that is unfavorable in his own reactions upon the reading of Comte's 
vast work. But Comte in his ample replies never really discusses these 
points. They were postponed to a more convenient season, when Mill 
should have read his "final determination" of the new science of society, 
both as a "philosophical foundation," and a "social reorganization." 

Before attempting "documentation" of this point, important because the 
onus has been thrown upon Mill of making gratuitous advances, and 
then misleading Comte by minimizing the disparity of their views, — let 
us see what the letters reveal as to the propriety of the overtures. The 
editor of the Lettres Inedites in his clear and interesting introduction 
obviously intends impartial justice to Mill, yet there seems to be the faint- 

39 



est trace of resentment in behalf of the frank, trustful and persecuted 
French thinker. But he lays himself open to refutation on a question of 
fact by alluding to Marrast, the French publicist, a common friend of the 
two philosophers, as a medium not employed by Mill to establish the 
intercourse he desired. This is the allusion,— "Sans etre connu de Comte, 
sans recourir meme, comme il pouvait le f aire, aux bons offices de Marrast, 
leur ami commun, il s'addresse a lui directement, pour lui exprimer son 
admiration." 

Mais pourquoi pas? However, as a fact, references to Marrast are 
comparatively frequent in the correspondence, while in the very first let- 
ter of Mill he says, — . . . "mais, encourage par mon ami M. Marrast, 
et pensant que peut-etre . . . il ne vous serait pas completement indiffer- 
ent de recevoir d'un pays etranger des temoignages de sympathie," . . . 
etc. And it is in the name of Marrast that Comte accepts the self intro- 
duction of Mill, apparently as sufficiently conventional to suit French 
ideas of propriety and, in view of what he takes to be Mill's position in 
the world of savants, as not detrimental to his own dignity as the succes- 
sor, temporal and spiritual, of Descartes. An extract from Comte's first 
reply indicates the tone of responsiveness, as well as it shows — not between 
the lines — what is going to happen. "I had previously learned with much 
satisfaction from a casual explanation of M. Marrast, that your wise 
energy had happily resisted the blind importuning of your friends to a 
parliamentary career. An extraordinary mind (une raison bien eminente) 
alone could make you feel how infinitely more useful your philosophic 
activity could be, by remaining a stranger to the too fluctuating point of 
view of parliamentary criticism, — which tends directly to prevent all 
regular habit of a general point of view, at a time when the character of 
generality in our conceptions constitutes precisely the chief social need." 
This involved more than the "positive method," to which Mill is com- 
mitted; it expresses sharply the "principles and the consequences" of the 
positive philosophy which in the sequel must render abortive this philoso- 
phic friendship, inaugurated with such mutual impulsiveness. 

Mill in his second letter addresses himself in his sober, conscientious 
way, to dissipate this inaugural misunderstanding. "I see that my friend 
Marrast has given you on my behalf certain information which is not 
quite correct. In the first place, I have not charge of, the statistical 
work of the East India Company, but only of a part of the political admin- 
istration of India, especially in connection with external relations, includ- 
ing the general control of numerous kings and kinglets, our dependents, 
whose backward civilization often embarasses us. Hence I must tell 
you that my abstention from Parliamentary life can afford me no title 
to praise, having always been a necessity, from the incompatibility of that 
life with the employment from which I derive my means of subsistence. 
I could not leave you in error in this respect, especially as there have 

40 



been occasions when, if my personal position had not forbidden direct 
political activity, I believe I should have allowed myself to enter upon it." 
Mill goes on to explain that his motives are twofold; first, the difficulty, 
greater in England than in France, of getting a hearing, even among the 
'corps d'elite," for untried theories; secondly, the impossibility in Eng- 
land — which "has not yet had its 1789" — of emancipating social philoso- 
phy, whether from empiricism or from theological tutelage, in the name 
and by means of, merely negative criticism. 

The introduction to the Lettres Inedites cites Mill's expression "diver- 
gences secondaires," as tho it were preposterous. But the correspondence 
was well along in its second year before this phrase — obviously one of 
politeness — occurs. Mill's formulations of points for discussion, ever 
increasing in length, culminate in the longest of his letters, where twelve 
(printed) pages are devoted chiefly to the question of the subordination 
of woman under the positive regime. This is the piece de resistence among 
the "divergences." It is undeniably a capital question, and Comte takes 
it up and goes into it with unusual fulness. But when Mill does not at 
once yield to arguments so conclusive for Comte's mind, the latter does 
not hesitate to signify that the discussion is in his view useless, and Mill 
perforce abandons it ; surely with slight hope that a theory in which he is 
so passionately interested — which is the result of a lifetime's experience, 
and bound up with all his social thinking — will be changed by Comte's 
forthcoming volume, — much less by "further reflection" on his part. 
After this forceful closure of debate by Comte, the Correspondence be- 
comes more conventional. It is much concerned with Comte's unfortunate 
situation and with Mill's generous expressions of sympathy and efforts 
of practical assistance. It is of little philosophical importance thenceforth. 
Mill declares in his appreciative way that, notwithstanding the fixed dis- 
agreement it revealed, the great discussion has resulted in permanent 
good to his mind and thought. 

We can better see the true relation of Mill and Comte if we notice the 
latter's answer to the first explanation, just quoted, of Mill's position and 
relation to public life. "I regret that M. Marrast unintentionally misled 
me about your particular position, but I am well content to learn that 
it is even better than I had thought, besides being of a nature to sustain 
your mind without difficulty at a high social point of view". . . . "While 
thanking you for your frank explanation on the subject of parliamentary 
life, allow me to differ somewhat from your opinion, and to congratulate 
myself, on behalf of the great cause of humanity, that your personal 
situation forces you to an activity less direct and more general. Perhaps 
the reading of my sixth volume will modify your own opinion on this 
point; for I there prove by pertinent argument how much philosophic 
activity ought now to predominate over political, properly so-called, 
thruout the extent of Western Europe; the former continuing in the 

41 



more or less explicit work of the social renovation. Surely I am far from 
condemning this political activity per se ; but I think truly superior minds 
should leave it henceforth to men of lesser worth (who will certainly not 
fail to display it) and reserve themselves for the philosophic elaboration 
of which they alone are capable, and on which now depends the progress 
of ultimate regeneration among the elite of humanity." 

In the study of this interesting correspondence matters are somewhat 
simplified by the fact that Mill's reaction to Comte's first great work 
only, is in question. For the association had ended some years before 
the appearance of the second. For Mill's mature conclusions on this, 
and the whole cycle of his works, we shall presently inquire in Auguste 
Comte and Positivism, the 200-page volume in which were reprinted 
Mill's two papers from the Westminster Review of the year 1864. Never- 
theless, the system of Comte is sufficiently explicit in the earlier work, 
especially in the sixth and last volume, to take Mill thru all essential 
phases of his reaction to that system. The reading of this last volume was 
subsequent to the abandonment of the discussion of the great question of 
the position of woman in the system, crucial and irreconcilable as it ap- 
peared, at Comte's request. To put it briefly, Mill accepted Comte's 
"social dynamics" and repudiated his "social statics." Comte's thought 
emancipated Mill from dogmatic Benthamism and at the same time re- 
vealed it to him as the best introduction the age offered, to the "positive 
spirit." "It was in the year 1828," (when he was twenty-two), he says 
in his first letter, "that I read, Monsieur, for the first time your little 
treatise on the Positive polity; and this reading gave to all my ideas a 
strong shock which, with other causes, but much more than they, deter- 
mined my definite withdrawal from the Benthamite sect of the revolution- 
ary school, in which I was reared and, I may almost say, in which I was 
born. Altho Benthamism remained without doubt very far from the 
true spirit of the positive method, that doctrine still seemed to me to 
offer the best preparation which exists today for real positivism applied 
to social doctrines ; whether by its rigorous logic, and the pains it always 
takes to understand itself; or especially, by its systematic opposition to 
every attempt to explain any phenomena whatever by means of absurd 
metaphysical entities, of which it taught me from my earliest youth to 
feel the essential nullity." 

The points emphasized here are points of method, and the statement 
accurately forecasts Mill's response to Comte's first principal and more 
critical work. The method is acceptable generally ; not so the reconstruc- 
tion, some principles of which he never could accept. This method was 
the method of science, and Mill, however far he may have gone in the 
direction of a scientific dogmatism, and felt the inadequacy of a "nega- 
tive philosophy" for constructive social labors, and the impotence of 
mere "revolution" to do anything but destroy outworn institutions, — he 

42 



could not but feel that the discovery of a true method was not in itself the 
regeneration and reorganization of society, but only the first great step in 
the emancipation of "superior minds," which should prepare them for 
the necessary "prevision" for a genuine social realism, making possible 
the recognition of the forces actually at work, and the new forces coming 
into being. 

The correspondence was abandoned in 1847, after Mill's letter of the 
17th May. Comte's memorandum on the date of reception, followed by 
"Repondu le — ," shows no original intention of not replying. It is in 
Comte's last letter, September 1846, that he tells Mill of changing his plan 
to publish the Systeme de politique positive as a whole ; it is to come out 
in two- volume installments. It appeared some five years later — in 185 1. 
The divergences between the two thinkers then were sufficiently devel- 
oped by the doctrines embodied explicitly or implicitly in the earlier Cours 
de philosophie positive. The mutual discussion of these differences could 
only be stimulating to Mill, and might have gone on indefinitely to (it is 
not too much to say) his endless delight. He ardently wished to see a 
method at which he had independently arrived, develope in the hands 
of a master thinker. If he himself could only help to make it practically 
useful, he should not have lived in vain. Both these men were funda- 
mentally eager — even impulsive, — enthusiastic and "suggestible." Only 
— "La pensee de Comte est restee jusqu'au bout fidele a elle-meme," as 
M. Levy-Bruhl says in his Introduction. After all, this statement is not 
free from ambiguity. It is quite as applicable to John Stuart Mill. We 
can see this by the reflection that positive social statics became Comte's 
all-mastering preoccupation, while positive social dynamics was Mill's. 
The former was interested in order, and this interest made him for all 
practical purposes another Utopian. Mill was interested in progress — 
progress becoming indefinitely more orderly. Mill's thought also "re- 
mained faithful to itself" in the sense of self-consistency, but its perman- 
ent structure only gave it more assimilative powers. Why should not 
Comte expect Mill to come to "agreement" by accepting Comte's demon- 
strations seriatim ? — as a mere mark of the unfolding of a really superior 
mind. Did Comte not follow Mill's advice to the letter when he advised 
against his taking up the study of German philosophy? In everything 
outside of his "pensee" — his highly systematic philosophy and intellectual 
regimen — Comte's suggestibility was naive. He was charmed with Mill's 
word "pedantocratie" as a characterization of a state ruled by "philoso- 
phers" who were themselves mere "erudits," and when organized and 
intrusted with power, capable of being the most reactionary class in 
society. Comte with a truly French politeness begs Mill's permission 
to make literary use of this clever term, — request not difficult to grant. 
Again, Comte makes Mill's Logic and other works or writings then 
available an exception to his rules of "hygiene cerebrate." And as we have 

43 



said, when after the completion of the Cours he purposed studying Ger- 
man philosophy — not that he expected to derive anything of philosophic 
value, but to master the language — and Mill advised him that only the 
great dramatic poets were worth while knowing, the advice was followed 
very readily. 

The essence of the disagreement of philosophic views is sharply defined 
in Bain's remark about Mill's chapter in his essay on Representative 
Government — that on the "Criterion of a Good Form of Government/' — 
"which contains an exceedingly pertinent discussion of the relation be- 
tween Order and Progress; and demonstrates that Order cannot be per- 
manent without Progress; a position in advance of Comte." 

The two articles in the Westminster on Comte's philosophy interrupted 
(says Bain) Mill's work on the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's 
Philosophy, and occupied him till the end of 1854. This was thirteen 
years after the publication of the Systeme de politique positive (1851), 
the second great work of Comte, and about seventeen years after the 
abandonment of intercourse with him. The figures emphasize that the 
basic principle of Comte's work adumbrated by Mill from the first, — the 
imminent final ascendancy of the static over the dynamic, — was really sub- 
versive of Mill's philosophy of society. Mill indeed looked forward to 
a very distant future wherein should emerge a social order stationary 
as far as its economic structure and the prevalence of Justice, as well 
as contrasted with dogmatic belief or superstition, are concerned. But 
these very conditions were the conditions of progress — which the indefi- 
nite perfectibility of human society makes possible. Mill's great trust 
in the saving grace of the complete separation of the "powers" was based 
on the idea of freeing the "spiritual" power from "temporal" control ; and 
his increasing opposition to the 'organization' of the spiritual power is 
grounded on the conviction that — apart from its incompatibility with the 
very idea of such a power — organization would defeat its own ends — of 
freedom from the state, and the ends of society — freedom from arbitrary 
control. "Je suis tres portee," he writes, long after the Comte episode, to 
a French expositor of Positivism, "a croire (sans vouloir decider positive- 
ment cette question pour l'avenir) que le nature meme d'un pouvoir 
spirituel legitime ne comporte pas une organization reele." 

In his third letter Mill pursues the topic of the "vie parlementaire," 
which, as he had explained, he had not so much avoided as been de- 
barred from by his position in the India House. He is "not far" from 
Comte's view that political action is incompatible with a real influence 
upon "philosophic renovation," "even in England," and admits Comte's 
Vlth volume may convince him. Certainly Comte alone has enunciated 
the principle of the separation of the powers (in his Vth volume), and 
Mill feels on this point "complete conviction." Yet, while he thinks the 
two powers should be "organized" (he uses the term here) in ways quite 

44 



distinct, he does not see why the same person should not, "jusqu'a un 
certain point," share in the activity of both. He thinks an education partly 
"active" is necessary to the perfecting of "speculative capacity," — and 
of course vice versa. The latter is common opinion, and sound. What 
Comte's volumes have thoroly 'cured' him of is the Utopian scheme of 
government by "philosophers" — or even "making it depend on high intel- 
lectual capacity conceived in the most general sense." This is the error 
of VHIth century speculation. He goes on to cite China as the classical 
example of a "pedantocracy," remarking sagely a propos, — "The majority 
of any lettered class is perhaps less disposed than that of any other class 
to permit itself to be led by the most highly developed intellects among 
them. And as this majority certainly could not be composed of great 
thinkers, but merely of scholars (erudits), or of scientists without gen- 
uine originality, the only result could be what is seen in China." The 
whole passage may be taken as forecasting Mill's objection to the organi- 
zation of the spiritual power, which unhappily was fundamental to Comte's 
systematization ; — unhappily because, as we shall presently notice more 
carefully, he deemed himself in the end to have had the deepest affinities 
with Comte on the subject of religion. In Comte's reply he dilates upon 
the term invented by Mill so spontaneously, and, in effect, ignores all the 
rest. 

In this same letter Mill touches on a subject which is to become a bar- 
rier between them — that of psychology. For Comte this is no science, 
and that, not because it is not yet "positive," but because it belongs to 
"metaphysics," and any pretentions it may have in the direction of a 
positive science are rendered vain by the greater capability of physiology 
to furnish an analysis of the "faculties," mental and moral. The "dis- 
covery" of Gall of the localization of the "organs" of the principal facul- 
ties in specific brain areas, connects for him directly the mental (and 
moral) with the physical man, and so joins biology with social science. 
Now Comte got the idea that Mill's forthcoming Logic was a sort of 
psychological work, — which in point of fact it is, in the sense that Mill, 
in whatever he writes, reveals the psychologist. In explaining, Mill, while 
acquitting his work on logic of being, at all events consciously, a treatise 
on psychology, is able to say a word for the validity of the latter as a 
scientific — even "positive" — inquiry. "I regret," he writes, "having unin- 
tentionally given you the idea that the philosophical work in question had 
as its object the analysis of our mental faculties and moral tendencies. I 
only intended to express my belief in the possibility and in the scientific 
value of psychology thus understood. But in my Logic I am engaged 
only with method — that is, with intellectual acts, making abstraction 
from the faculties as far as possible." This is a very mild protest, but 
there is implied a capital disagreement. A "Logic" for Comte could only 
be — in so far as positive — a treatise on physiological psychology; some- 

45 



thing subsidiary to biology, and introductory to the social science proper. 
What he thought Mill must mean by a work on logic was, "a sound 
rational analysis of really primitive mental faculties and moral disposi- 
tions," by someone without "any illusions about the nature of such a 
subject, — henceforth always connected, at least in principle, with the 
anatomical determinations of cerebral physiology" ... etc. 

We may cite from Mill's fourth letter a passage as typical of his state- 
ments of agreement with Comte. They are broad and general, implying 
much to be threshed out by debate ; and here also he is — as he tells Comte 
he is in the Logic — preoccupied with method. He says he awaits with 
interest Comtes' "judgment upon England" in his Vlth volume, and 
expects an "example of the great power of interpretation of general 
facts . . . which a mind truly scientific may derive from a profound 
knowledge of sociological laws." He then continues, — "In spite of the 
brevity of human life, we may both hope to see the social situation and 
the national character of each important part of the human race, con- 
nected with the laws of human nature, and with the qualities of the 
general or particular organic environment, with a relation of sequence as 
certain, if not as complete, as that which now exists in the most ad- 
vanced sciences. I should be very happy to believe myself capable of 
taking a really important part, even tho a secondary one, in the great 
work." A world of misunderstanding might have been avoided if the 
friends could have met and talked over these alleged "sociological laws." 
Mill was more or less under the illusion of scientific dogma, — as most 
thinkers are who follow in general the same line of development; in 
turning away from a theologizing science, they run into the arms of 
another theory, which, however better grounded, and hospitable to critical 
examination, has also a too plausible generality. Still, allowing for this 
tendency of Mill to recognize scientific law with enthusiasm, he must 
have regarded the sociological laws as not having gotten much beyond 
the stage of "empirical laws" based upon historical generalizations. Now 
these "inductions" must be correlated with psychological laws — which 
Mill probably considered pretty well worked out by his father. But of 
this more may be said when we come to examine Mill's Westminster 
essays. 

It is in the sixth letter that a really obvious divergence is disclosed. 
Comte has prescribed as it were a bitter dose for Mill's psychological 
heresy — six volumes of Gall! He reads the work with "serious atten- 
tion," but then finds himself "quite as embarrassed as before" the read- 
ing, in the attempt to judge Gall's theory — favorably. "I am almost 
convinced that there is something of truth in it, and that the elementary 
tendencies and capacities, whatever they may be, are each connected 
with a particular part of the brain. But I experience very great diffi- 
culties." These are of course concerned with the "special localization" 

46 



}f phrenology. Mill discusses them thruout some three (printed) pages. 
The theory is full of anomalies and absurdities, and as tho to cap the 
:limax, Mill can cite his own experience to show the "prematurity of all 
ocal specialization." "A very pronounced phrenologist exclaimed the 
nstant he saw me for the first time, 'What do you do with your construc- 
iveness?' Now I lack almost entirely the corresponding faculty. I am 
destitute of the sense of the mechanical, and my ineptitude for any opera- 
tion which requires manual skill is simply prodigious I" Another em- 
arassment of Mill's is that the only professors of phrenology he knows 
are to say the least mediocre minds. Of course, the premature surveying 
and blue-printing of the cortical surfaces by them is too obvious for 

omte to deny. He grants the whole contention — they "agree," except 
that Comte remains more hopeful that this convenient definiteness of the 
correlation of the mind with its organ will be progressively established 
on a positive basis. And as the wish is often father to the thought, he 
proceeds to employ the principle of special localization as tho it were so 
established. So much so that this remained one of the irreconcilable 
points, as we shall see in Mill's review written more than twenty years 
ater. The bearing of the doctrine upon Mill's special psychological inter- 
est and his great hopes for that science, is as plain as it is important. 

In his eighth letter Mill gives further light on the literary history of his 
Logic in its relation to Comte's Cours. He speculates generously, not to 
say flatteringly, upon the probable effect of an earlier acquaintance with 
the latter. But it is quite clear that the very considerable influence he 
pictures, would have been upon method, resulting in the modification of 
some of the conceptions he operated with, in the direction of "positivity." 
"I should certainly have given to the exposition of my ideas, even with- 
out definite intention, a somewhat different turn, making the exposition 
in certain parts less metaphysical in form." We may take this as a fairly 
accurate estimate. Its limitations are quite obvious. The Logic would 
have been different in no respect that would not have emphasized its 
inherent character. Mill remarks further on, — "Ce livre est l'expression 
de dix annees de ma vie philosophique." This period may be compared 
with, — altho it certainly does not represent the concentrated speculative 
labors of, — the twelve years devoted by Comte to the Cours de philosophic 
positive. 

Another allusion to his patient study of phrenology occurs in the same 
letter. "Unfortunately I cannot flatter myself with the hope of arriving 
soon at ideas more settled about the constructive (affirmative) portion 
of Gall's theory." The reason lies in a dilemma in which he adroitly 
shows Comte to be also involved. "Since if he himself has not (according 
to you) sufficient knowledge of zoology and comparative anatomy, I, 
who have only a very superficial acquaintance with the sciences, should 
be still less able to judge the real force of the evidences that he produces 

47 



in support of the general conclusions of phrenological physiology; — at 
least till some expert should accept them, and place them before me and 
everybody else, by doing the important work, the nature and necessity 
of which you point out in your letter." This may be a British, even 
"bourgeois," argument, but it is hard to refute. 

We are now in August 1842. Some seven or eight exchanges have 
taken place between the two thinkers, and about eight months have 
elapsed since the correspondence was begun. In Mill's eighth epistle 
there also occurs, at this early stage, a very explicit and seriously urgent 
plea for that debate, which had always been his desire and hope — for 
him, in a word, the object of the correspondence. The whole paragraph 
is striking and must be quoted : He is declaring that Comte's letters are a 
"veritable fete" — and especially the news of the completion of the "sixth 
volume." He feels the less disposed to broach philosophic discussions, 
which the reading of the final portion of his system might render quite 
unnecessary. "However, I have always much desired that a genuine and 
frank comparison, in some degree systematic, of our ideas, whether philo- 
sophical or sociological, might be established between us; altho always 
feeling that this would necessarily require as a preparatory condition, that 
I should have a complete knowledge of your great philosophic work in 
its entirety, — and even that you should take cognizance up to a certain 
point of what I have myself written, in order to understand my point 
of departure, and the course of my intelectual development, — so as to 
supply the place of many explanations, and make the discussion 
bear from the beginning upon real and fundamental points of divergence — 
always supposing that such should be discovered, — ce dont je ne puis pas 
decider." Then follows a paragraph, brief, but as significant as possible 
of Mill's philosophic attitude : "I am conscious of always being more and 
more in sympathy with your theories according as I have become more 
acquainted with them and understood them better. But you are well 
aware, in your character of mathematician, that a continuous decrease 
is not always a diminution without limit." The limit was soon reached 
— on the question of divorce, opening up the general problem of the posi- 
tion of women. 

The separation of Comte and his wife brings this subject to the fore. 
Mill when he married, which was not till 185 1, the year Comte's Politique 
appeared, and some five years after the correspondence with Comte 
ceased, — wrote a paper giving his wife carte blanche "to dispose of 
herself," and absolutely repudiating all the rights acquired by his mar- 
riage, — which he expressly regrets his inability legally to divest himself 
of. This will serve to illustrate his position on divorce. Comte made 
a virtue of his rigid attitude, — it was essentially the Catholic doctrine, — 
maintained amid the contrary solicitations of his private life, and deems 
that his sheer energy of conviction under these circumstances constitutes 

48 



a "very strong presumption" in favor of the correctness of his opinion 
on divorce as part of his system. Mill could not concede the slightest 
validity to such logic. 

However, Comte does discuss this question at considerable length. It 
recurs in the course of the correspondence during about a year, when 
Mill filed his twelve-page brief, and Comte suggested the abandonment 
of the discussion; the real ending, as has been said, of the philosophic 
phase of their intercourse. In about his ninth letter (September 1842) 
Comte writes as follows : "As to our present lack of agreement on the 
subject of divorce, I am convinced that, despite my individual case — of a 
nature happily exceptional, altho now too little rare, — I should not hesi- 
tate to reveal to you my opinion upon the social importance of the com- 
plete indissolubility of marriage, — the final indispensable completion of the 
institution of monogamy, and an essential condition of the ultimate econ- 
omy. For I sojourned a long time in the sociological phase where you 
are still in this matter; and I abandoned it spontaneously in opposition 
to the tendencies of my personal situation, as a consequence of the most 
profound convictions resulting from the entire course of my political 
reflections." The statement continues to about three hundred and fifty 
words, marked thruout with the same energy of conviction. As for argu- 
ment, Mill is referred to the anticipated work on the Politique positive, 
where he is assured "this essential article will be adequately explained." 

In December 1842, after reading the last volume of the Philosophic 
positive, Mill writes, "As regards the desir eyou manifest — so honorable 
to me — of knowing whether, after a mature judgment, I consider your 
last chapters, and especially the first of the three, adequate to define the 
constitution of a new general philosophy, — that is to say, a complete and 
enduring systematization of the whole of our actual conceptions, — you 
must surely feel already, after all I have just said, that I do feel this con- 
viction very deeply, and that I entirely agree with the general conclusions 
of your work, with the exception of some secondary ideas which seem 
insufficiently elucidated, and which, even if they never were so, would 
not alter in any degree the essentially satisfactory character of this im- 
mense systematization." What Mill is endorsing here is sufficiently clear 
to anyone scrutinizing the letter closely. This is during the course of the 
only real discussion they had — on the "woman question," precipitated by 
Comte's intransigeance on the matter of divorce. Certainly this question 
was not a minor one, but Comte's position on it did not vitiate the "im- 
mense systematization," in respect of general principles and methods. 
He shows his meaning more plainly by adding that, convinced as he had 
long been that only the "ascendancy" of the positive spirit could pro- 
duce a thoroly logical mind, he would not have believed there was in 
existence such a "realization" of this — "and from the very first step" — 
as Comte's book. He continues in the same paragraph, however, in a 

49 



way which betrays a new fear, and the discovery of a new extreme ten- 
dency in Comte — over-systematization. This became the object of some 
ironic stress in the Westminster papers. In this letter he says, "You 
make me afraid of the energy and fulness of your convictions, which 
thus seem incapable of ever needing confirmation on the part of any other 
intellect. And I feel that the invaluable sympathy of which you give 
me testimony to an extent far beyond my real merits, — and which you 
proclaimed with such noble confidence, in the note devoted to me, to all 
philosophic minds in Europe, — obliges me now to tremble before you!" 
The note acknowledges the authorship of the much admired term "pedan- 
tocracy." 

Now follow two paragraphs. "Avec cela" — "At the same time, there 
are always questions, more or less secondary," (Here we have the cele- 
brated phrase: note the context carefully.) "upon which I still retain 
(conserve) either an opinion different from yours, or difficulties not yet 
resolved. Altho both probably tend to disappear, I must not seek to 
minimize the real difference that may exist between us: — the less so, 
since I feel today, with reference to every opinion you have sanctioned, 
the necessity of defending myself against solicitation, — always more to 
be feared in my particular disposition than a hypercritical spirit." Then 
the give-and-take sort of thing Mill had in mind appears "nettement" 
in the beginning and closing sentences of the other paragraph cited: "I 
adjourn all more precise indications of these differences until the time, 
now at hand, of the publication of my book, which will indicate some of 
them, either directly, or more often indirectly." . . . "As to the intrinsic 
value of the positive conceptions which are found in it, I can have 
thereon no definite opinion until they shall have been known and judged 
by you — hitherto the sole competent judge on this subject." 

After Mill's Logic had been read by Comte, Mill resumes discussion. 
His notion is still that their relations are a remarkable instance of spon- 
taneous intellectual accord; that, starting widely apart, and associated 
only on "two-thirds of the way," they are however in essential harmony. 
This spontaneous agreement is itself evidence both of the truth and of 
the "opportuneness" of the "new philosophy." In the letter now before 
us, written in June 1843, occurs a passage amounting to a page of print, 
which however is too good a historical document to be mutilated. Let us 
read the whole of it into the evidence. "Reassured for the future as to 
questions of method, whereon I no longer fear any serious divergence, 
either about the general theory of positivism, or about its special applica- 
tion to social studies, I can only anticipate an equally perfect agreement in 
regard to social doctrines. Till now this agreement has existed especially 
in relation to that part of your doctrines which more than all the rest 
belongs properly to yourself. I speak of the general laws of social 
dynamics and of the historical development of mankind, including the 

50 



practical corollaries derived from them and which are so important; 
the most essential of which is, in my view, the great principle of the 
separation of the two powers. As regards the doctrines of static soci- 
ology, which you did not discover but rather received from ancient social 
theories, altho you have supported them with your customary energy of 
philosophic conviction, — there are still some real disagreements between 
us. These disagreements are connected no doubt in most respects only 
with the fact that I have not yet reached a state of complete conviction 
about things which in your view are demonstrated. While fully recogniz- 
ing for example the social necessity of the fundamental institutions of 
property and marriage, and while entertaining no Utopian ideas upon 
either subject, I am however very much inclined to think that these two 
institutions may be destined to undergo more important modifications 
than you appear to think; altho I am utterly unable to foresee what 
they will be. I have already told you that the question of divorce remains 
undecided for me, despite the powerful argument of your fourth volume. 
And I am attainted of a still more fundamental heresy, since I do not 
accept in principle the necessary subordination of one sex to the other. 
You see, we have still questions of major importance to discuss, — a 
discussion however which it would be futile to open at the end of a 
letter." 

The following month, July 1843, Mill assigns ill-health as a reason for 
again postponing discussion on the questions which are looming larger, 
and he betrays his anxiety. "The same reason" — alluding to his health — 
"prevents me from beginning immediately, as I should desire to, the 
serious discussion of the important social questions upon which our 
opinions do not yet agree. The confidence that you express that this 
divergence of opinion will be only transitory, is a fresh evidence of your 
esteem, which is so gratifying to me, and any diminution of which would 
be very painful." 

Of course Comte's theory of the "natural" subordination of woman 
rests on biology and comparative anatomy — the physical differences, and 
lesser physical stature and muscular strength of the sex. Mill takes up 
in his next letter "notre importante discussion sociologique." He devotes 
most of his letter to this vital question. He understands Comte to con- 
ceive the organic constitution of the woman as a "state of prolonged 
childhood." Against this thesis he argues somewhat as follows: It is 
true that physiologists find women nearer than men to the "organic char- 
acter of children," in respect both to the muscular, cellular and nervous 
systems, and probably the "cerebral structure." "Cela pourtant est bien 
loin d'etre decisif pour moi." To infer logically the "inferiority" of 
the woman would require proof that the difference between childhood 
and manhood is due to anatomical structure. But it is almost wholly due 
to "lack of exercise" or activity in certain directions. He thinks that 

51 



if the physically immature brain might be kept so while being educated 
and exercised under careful control, it would become a man's brain, altho 
very different from any normal human type. Just so the moral type of 
woman averages considerably different from the masculine. He doubts 
whether the "time has yet come" to define exactly these differences. 
Physiologists say woman's brain is smaller and hence weaker, but more 
active than man's. Then their quickness ought to compensate for lesser 
power of sustained mental effort. They would be more adapted to 
"poetry" and "practical life" than to "science." Observation seems to 
verify this reasoning. Mill's method from this point is of course to mini- 
mize the "real differences" by emphasizing the influence of "education 
and social position." Education of women provides nothing to stimulate 
powers they may lack ; while education of men seems to account for their 
possession of them in greater degree. Application to "science," and 
"even the dead languages," drills the brain in sustained effort. Preoccu- 
pation with the minutiae of home life, "distracting" but not "occupying" 
the mind, does not give the same strength to its organ. Now among 
ignorant men we find the same phenomena. Indeed Mill "finds" that in 
ordinary practical affairs of life even "mediocre" women show greater 
capability than men of similar mediocrity. More, — an ordinary man 
has little general interest beyond his "specialty," compared to the average 
woman. Comte will say (says Mill) that the emotional life dominates 
in woman. But this is true only of "sympathy." Selfishness (egoi'sme) 
may predominate in man; but if sympathy very often becomes a species 
of selfishness in many women, the same is true of all men who have not 
been educated (and few have) to a social outlook, and to foresight of the 
widest consequences of conduct. Now this type of education and training 
is exactly what women do not receive. On the contrary, any subordinat- 
ing of family and clique to a "general interest" would be frowned upon. 
Mill admits that their extraordinary "nervous excitability" makes 
women more like young men than old, and that they have, more than 
men, difficulty in "making abstraction" from immediate and individual 
interests. He thinks however that this "fault" is well offset by the absence 
of another — that fault of philosophers, detachment not alone from individ- 
ual interests, "mais de tout interet reel" ! Women are too practical for 
speculative "dreams," and (better still) a woman "rarely forgets what 
pertains to real beings, — to their happiness and to their sufferings." 

He reminds Comte that there is no question of a society "gouverner 
par les femmes," but only of finding out whether a society would not 
be better governed by both men and women. Then with characteristic 
hopefulness and courtesy, — "Au reste, il est peut-etre tres naturel qu'a 
cet egard vous et moi soyons d'opinion differente." And why? Because 
the French character contains much that is notoriously accounted "fem- 
inine," and a French thinker may well hesitate to "give further strength 

52 



to what already has too much." But English faults are "rather in a 
contrary sense." This line of argument, far from being uncomplimen- 
tary to French character, embraces it in an acknowledgment of women's 
"equality" with man. Mill would have Comte observe this coincidence, — 
that "while people have always recognized in the French, to a certain 
degree, that constitution which is regarded as feminine, what nation, 
however, has produced greater philosophers, more illustrious statesmen ?" 
In October 1843 Mill prepared a veritable brief on this question, the 
only one of their differences discussed very much by Comte, and the one 
which really doomed their intercourse to inconclusion, as far as "philoso- 
phy" was concerned. A whole letter, twice Mill's usual length, is given to 
his statement, which is the systematic completion of the one just sketched 
from his August letter. He begins with a new expression of his point of 
view that rational differences of opinion even on fundamental questions, 
between "educated people," need cause no anxiety about the possibility of 
an ultimately "sufficient convergence of opinion." Yet — "this disagree- 
ment, and the mode of thought revealed on both sides by the discussion, 
confirm my opinion that the intellectual basis of static sociology is not 
yet sufficiently prepared." As to social dynamics Mill says that in his 
opinion its "foundations" are already fully constructed. But as to 
"statics," history now plays only a secondary tho important role as a 
criterion of explanation. And now comes the point where Mill offers his 
original contribution to the new method. "The passage of social statics 
to the truly positive stage consequently requires, compared to dynamics, 
a much greater perfection of the science of the human individual. It 
presupposes especially a very advanced state of the secondary science 
which I have called Ethology; that is to say, of the theory of the influ- 
ence of different external circumstances, whether individual or social, 
on the formation of the intellectual and moral character. This theory, 
a necessary basis of rational education, today appears to me the least 
advanced of all speculations which are at all important. Any genuine 
knowledge — even empirical — of this kind of natural relations, it seems 
to me could not be rarer, and sound observations are not less so, — either 
on account of the difficulty of the subject, or of the tendency, which 
prevails oftener than not in this sort of researches, to regard as inex- 
plicable all that no one has succeeded in explaining. The sort of biological 
study begun by Helvetius — tho with great exaggeration, has had no one 
to carry it on. And I cannot help thinking that the reaction of the XlXth 
century against the philosophy of the XVIIIth has resulted in our day 
in an opposite exaggeration, tending to assign to primitive variations too 
large a part, and to conceal in many respects their true character." Mill 
adds that he thinks it quite natural for Comte to explain such an opinion 
by his inadequate knowledge of animal physiology — especially the physi- 

53 



ology of the brain. And he declares he is doing his bit towards the "dis- 
appearance" of such objections. 

"J'ai fait des etudes consciencieuses sur ce sujet." "I have even read 
with scrupulous attention the six volumes of Gall." Nothing could be 
fairer. Alas, that "love's labor '$ lost!" Concerning Gall's polemic 
against psychology, Mill not only admits the justice of his criticism of his 
predecessors, but confesses to have long since surpassed his point of 
view. Mill repeats what he has already told Comte, that the general 
principle which Comte regards as already established, as to the localiza- 
tion on very broad lines of very comprehensive classes of functions, is 
not proved by Gall's book — which in fact did not intend to prove it. 
Its thesis is, according to Mill, just "that particular localization" which 
he supposes Comte, like himself, to reject. He sees the "necessity" of 
giving attention to every kind of investigation of connections between 
anatomy and mental and moral phenomena, — between structure and func- 
tions. He will seize with avidity any opportunity, do any possible read- 
ing, to clear up the subject. Meanwhile, all reading and reflection so 
far make him think "nothing is really established, all is vague and uncer- 
tain, in this order of speculations." Moreover, since "ethology" is 
equally backward, "anatomical variations ought to be held responsible 
only for 'residues/ " applying his logical terminology, "after abstracting 
from the total phenomenon everything that admits of any explanation 
whatever." 

Referring to his last letter Mill then explains that the view he discusses 
there, that women are less adapted for prolonged mental labors such as 
the pursuit of science and philosophy require, is not his own opinion; it 
is merely the only one "not in flagrant contradiction with the facts." If 
one admitted it however, it would indicate, not any inaptitude for science, 
but only less of "vocation" to it on the part of woman. 

Setting aside then these problems, but preserving a receptive attitude 
towards any new information, Mill takes up the arguments whereby 
Comte thinks his position established, irrespectively of "anatomical con- 
siderations." They rest on an "exact analysis of general experience, usual 
as well as historical." As to "usual experience," — Mill's English is quite 
different from Comte's French. Without pretending to any expert knowl- 
edge of enigmatical femininity, from the best information Mill thinks the 
education of women in England stresses sex much less than in France. 
There from childhood they are trained to act with direct reference to the 
effect upon the other sex. This involves a dissimulation which affects 
their own development, as well as the judgment of an observer. In Eng- 
land women's education imposes only rules of "wellbeing," as regards 
sex, and dissimulation is limited to the demands of social propriety. Mill 
seems to mean that whatever mystery there might be about "woman," 
was due to a highly purposeful expression in the French, and to a slightly 

54 



hypocritical repression in the English. Coquetry in the former, prudery in 
the latter. The English type could be better understood. "Their social 
dependence restricts their development, but does not alter it as much as 
in France." At all events Mill submits that Comte's "absolute sen- 
tence" (judgment) of administrative incapacity is quite unwarranted. In 
"domestic government" for example, English establishments are well- 
known to be the best managed — at least as regards the obedience of chil- 
dren and servants. These latter are (except the Scotch) less intelligent 
than in Southern Europe, but far more efficient, even tho this depends on 
constant intelligent supervision, — which spontaneously proves the point. 
In fact English women have the monopoly of home management. Not 
only do menfolk regard their own interference as "ridiculous," but very 
often are in such matters "of a sovereign ignorance and incapacity !" 

Turning now to industrial management, the work of women here has 
been tried thus far only on a small scale, where it has not been denied 
that they have done as well as men, and not lacked perseverance. Perse- 
verence (l'esprit de suite), admittedly a sine qua non of sustained success, 
does not however mean merely mental endurance thruout a working day ; 
if it did, where would most men come out? But it means, thoroly trying 
out a definite, conscious plan. Mill thinks men cannot successfully dis- 
pute such a quality with womankind. The caprice or fickleness with 
which they are charged (tho by no means so in England) does not touch 
their permanent interests. For endurance in "important designs" women 
are distinguished. And their "caprice" is "more apparent than real," 
however well they may understand the occasional usefulness of this 
appearance in a masculine world. 

Concerning Comte's opinion that women are more under the control 
of impulse and desire than men, — that passion predominates over reason, 
— Mill thinks experience shows the very contrary. Renunciation is 
woman's social lot. Men are hardly capable of it even on great occa- 
sions, impatient of it ordinarily. He does not base any argument on 
this, — it is the mere result of power on the one side and dependence on 
the other. Nevertheless a priori, the supremacy of reason is propor- 
tional to the habit of self-examination. One ignorant of his own charac- 
ter is incapable of rational conduct. Feeling, thought, behavior, are con- 
trolled by mere general habit. Mill thinks the sexes are about equally 
remiss as to self-examination. The resulting self-command is very rare. 
But English opinion credits women with a "force of moral repression'" 
far greater than men believe themselves capable of. This superiority 
is deemed "proper" to them. Mill himself believes the witness of expe- 
rience is at any rate not entirely against that view. He adds that women 
are credited with a more scrupulous conscience; "but what is conscience, 
if not the submission of the passions to reason?" 

"I now come to the argument founded upon the persistence until our 

55 



age of the social subordination of women, compared with the gradual 
emancipation of the inferior classes in the most advanced nations, — 
altho these classes began everywhere by being slaves." Historically this 
seems only explainable by "organic inferiority." But Mill thinks a bet- 
ter answer will be found. He finds the general direction of the answer 
in an emphasis, not on any such assumption, but on the fact of woman's 
"subjection" interpreted in the light of the effects of other instituted sub- 
jections among classes of male population. The peculiarity of women's 
subjection has been that it confines her to the domestic sphere, and that it 
links her in a unique intimacy with her individual master, — and, he might 
have added, with her male kinsfolk only less intimately. Her social 
activities are circumscribed by this dominant interest, — which is not 
freely her own, but prescribed for her, along with the rules directing her 
conduct; and these demand not foresight but obedience. Mill thinks the 
mere habit of this intimate dependence would make women a "weaker 
sex," quite apart from any gross or physical abuse of their power by her 
menfolk. As compared with slavery, or even with serfdom, woman's 
"servitude" is much more agreeable, — which accounts for its persistence. 

This seems to be the direct answer to Comte's "historical argument." 
As to the self-emancipation of the subject classes, Mill thinks the more 
the slavery is directly "domestic" the more it destroys any effective 
spirit of revolt ; that altho slaves have achieved both freedom and social 
"equality," the household slaves have found emancipation only as a result 
of others' prowess. Agricultural slaves of antiquity were nearer the 
position of serfs, whose feudal duties are limited and leave him some 
freedom. He has some property, requires foresight, "receives not the 
bread of others," must provide for himself. He sometimes commands 
others, but is master of himself, has the authority and duties of a pater- 
familias, and "learns to think himself someone." But this semi-inde- 
pendence is not the lot of woman, — far above serfdom tho that lot may 
be, in Europe at least. Even the serfs owe their first relaxation from 
slavery to the economic interest of their masters, seconded by the "moral 
authority of the Church." Mill thinks not "one man in 10,000," who has 
never known freedom, would give up a "pampered slavery" for it, — so 
debasing is the habit of dependence. Now the "careful" rearing of 
women from childhood in the belief that they must always be under 
masculine authority, and have no concern with "real affairs," employs all 
their "sympathetic resources" in seeking happiness, not in their own 
life, but in that of the other sex, and at the cost of dependence. 

"These considerations seem to me more than sufficient to explain an 
almost indefinite delay of the emancipation of women, without compelling 
the influence that it may never arrive." Mill thinks Comte should "con- 
fess" that woman could not find freedom till long after the serf; and 
his is quite recent. Moreover, "on a theory of natural equality," her 

56 



"elevation" is as "advanced," and is advancing as rapidly, as one might 
expect. The serfs attained freedom by creating towns and fighting 
their lords, aided by numerical strength against military skill, — physical 
strength being equal man for man. But women must "rise" by pro- 
gressive individual successes in all unforbidden careers, surpassing all 
expectations. In such self-emancipation, the only possible way, Mill 
thinks they are making rapid progress. In literature women are begin- 
ning to reveal genius even, altho it may be rather "ornamental" in a 
sex not usually given to "serious studies," or to "live by its labor." The 
great lack is strong originality — natural in such recent bgeinnings; "ce 
sont les Romains qui viennent apres les Grecs." The imitative and con- 
ventional are giving way to the genuinely feminine in the writings of 
women. Soon this growing originality will produce work of the first 
rank. 

Mill concludes what has become a "treatise" in place of a letter, by 
reference to the anomaly, — ridiculous, as Comte says; "a queer contrast 
to their social position as a whole," as Mill admits ; — of queenship. This 
kind of "high direction of human affairs" is the only one which is not 
closed to women, and, in most European countries, is still open to them. 
Now in the two centuries between the time "when royalty ceased to re- 
quire special military skill, and that when it began no longer to require, 
or even to be compatible with, any ability whatever," — there were pro- 
portionally as many "great" queens as great kings. Mill "thinks so, at 
least ; and this experience, in circumstances far from favorable, ought to 
have some weight ... in the question of their governmental capacity." 

Comte's reply to this great effort is not encouraging. He intimates that 
in his opinion further discussion is useless; and contents himself with 
citing authorities on biology, etc. Mill can only accede to this; and 
declaring that he has gotten good out of the discussion anyway, he 
concludes that, after all, Comte had "definitely founded dynamic soci- 
ology." He promises further, to read de Blainville and Spurzheim. The 
former, a celebrated naturalist, was one of Comte's seemingly few scien- 
tific friends; the latter, a German physician, was one of the founders 
of phrenology. Mill had explained that his feminist opinions had resisted 
all assaults. "As you have also on your part a very fixed opinion, it is 
scarcely probable that an epistolary discussion, or even an oral one, 
should cause our disagreement to disappear ; but it may without that be in 
more than one way useful to us." As for Comte, he cannot understand, 
even credit, fixity in the opinions of a supposed proselyte. "Allow me 
however still to hope that your perseverance in this case is not irrevocable, 
and will yield later to the spontaneous influence of your own meditations, 
— perhaps even before the period when these reflections can be fortified 
by what I have to write specially upon this weighty subject in my forth- 
coming work." 

57 



In January 1844 Mill reminds Comte of a passage in "next to the 
last chapter" of the Logic where he "gives a complete public adherence" 
to Comte's "fundamental law of human evolution," — that of the three 
stages. He has no doubt of the "truth and universality" of this law, or 
its serviceability as a "foundation" for the explanation of the "chief 
secondary facts of human development." Its completeness he would 
"never have believed possible," but for Comte's "realizing" it in so many 
important respects. It is because "dynamics" is thus so advanced, that 
Mill believes the establishment of the principles of social statics is going 
to occupy the most important place in that phase "of our enterprise" 
nearest at hand. 

By January 1845 Mill shows his abandonment of the hope of any 
agreement with Comte on social statics. Discussing Littre's project of 
a Positivist review, with Comte as editor and Mill as a regular con- 
tributor, Mill once more signifies his adhesion in "philosophic methods, 
historical doctrines, laws of development past and present." "But in 
founding a Review, and especially in founding it in the name of a sys- 
tem of philosophy, one undertakes to throw oneself into all questions of 
any importance that are currently discussed. And on this ground it is 
not to be supposed that there would be sufficient harmony in our opinions. 
I think if you were called on to pronounce upon all questions, and to state 
all your ideas, we should find ourselves in disagreement more often and 
more seriously than you seem to believe, — and than I myself at first 
believed." In fact, Mill says he thinks positivism is not in a proper state 
to announce itself as a "school," and "in the interest of speculative de- 
velopment, this essay in propagandism seems premature." To be a 
recognized school, "a common body of doctrine would be necessary ; yet 
there is as yet only a method and some very general principles, which 
are not even yet recognized by the majority of those who accept the 
essential principle of positivism, — that of absolutely declining all specula- 
tion about 'first causes,' and confining ourselves to investigation of the 
operative laws of phenomena." Mill adds kindly that this is formal 
advice, and that on personal grounds all "depends on the chances of 
success": Littre and de Blainville should be judges of that. The enter- 
prise however was abandoned. 

The editor of Lettres inedites states most clearly the circumstances 
both of education and character which made Mill the peculiarly tem- 
perate thinker he became. An extremist only to extremists, and almost 
equally to those in opposite camps, he has succeeded as rarely happens 
in contributing something "positive" to all schools. Says M. Levy-Bruhl, 
"After the external education his father made him undergo, he gave 
himself another more comprehensive one. This experience taught him 
never to consider his present ideas as entirely definite. Penetrated with 
a religious respect for truth, and convinced that this truth — at least in 

58 



philosophic and social matters — presents a multitude of aspects of which 
we see only a part, his effort went to the discovery of the greatest number 
of these aspects. He thought he had no right to sacrifice the slightest 
particle of truth to the beautiful logical order of a system. The chief 
epochs of his philosophic career are thus marked by the perception of 
new ideas and doctrines which impressed his mind and which he endeav- 
ored to assimilate, without being first assured of their perfect harmony 
with the community of his previous notions." Again, — "Like Comte 
he is convinced that the intellectual regeneration of Europe must precede 
the ethical. In his view, as in Comte's, the capital problem is, to unite 
human minds in a set of common convictions, different from ancient 
beliefs only in having no further need of a theological foundation." 
And — "His favorite maxim was, 'To do the work to which after due 
deliberation you think you are best adapted, to do it in the interest of 
humanity, and at your departure leave the world a little better than you 
found it.'" Such was the Mill to whom the thought of Comte made 
such strong appeals. 

And the kind of statement in Comte's works that must have attracted 
him we can see in passages like the following: "Seeking to reduce to its 
simplest expression the general spirit of theological and metaphysical 
polity, we see that it leads back to two essential considerations. As re- 
gards the mode of procedure that spirit consists in the predominance of 
imagination over observation. As regards general ideas intended to 
direct efforts, it consists on the one hand in conceiving social organiza- 
tion in an abstract way, — which is to say, as independent of the state of 
civilization ; and on the other hand, in regarding the progress of civiliza- 
tion as not subject to any law." Or again, — "Civilization consists, properly 
speaking, in the development of the human mind, on the one hand, and 
on the other, in the development of the action of man upon nature which 
is the consequence of it. Moreover, all the elements of which the idea 
of civilization is composed are, the sciences, the fine arts, and industry; 
this last expression being taken in the widest sense." Religion was not 
a special, but the most general, expression of the human spirit or mind. 
On the other hand, as to its form it was found among the beaux-arts. 
Apparently Comte thought philosophic genius could create a religion. 
Mill seemed to have agreed with him as to the generality of religion ; but 
the development of an elaborate artistic technique was foreign to his 
proposal of a conscious intellectual, or even scientific, direction and control 
of the spirit of religion. We can see how Comte's philosophy of religion 
at once revealed in Mill the deepest affinities and stirred the deepest 
antagonism. 

One is tempted to quote here a very late (1854) statement of Mill 
on this subject, because of its epistolary directness and conciseness. He 
writes (in French) to Barbot de Chement, captain of artillery, — "I accept 

59 



in general the logical part of Comte's doctrines, or in other words all 
that is related to the method and philosophy of the sciences. While 
I find some gaps which I am compelled to fill in my own way, I recognize 
that no one except Aristotle or Bacon has done so much to perfect the 
theory of scientific methods. I accept in great part the criticism of his 
predecessors, and the general bases of the historical theory of the develop- 
ment of mankind, — excepting differences of detail. As to religious views, 
— which, as you doubtless know, for him as for every free thinker, are a 
great obstacle to influence among the majority of my fellow-countrymen, 
— it is just in this connection that my opinions are beyond contradiction 
closest to M. Comte's. I am in perfect agreement upon the negative 
part of the question, while on the affirmative part I hold like him that 
humanity as a whole, represented especially by illustrious minds and 
characters, past, present or to come, may become not only for exceptional 
persons but for everybody, the object of a feeling capable of filling with 
advantage the place of all existing religions, both for the demands of the 
heart and of those of social life. This truth others have felt before M. 
Comte, but no one I know of has weighed it so thoroly or upheld it so 
strongly. There remains his moral and political philosophy, — and here 
I must above all confess my almost total disagreement. Altho claiming 
as much "positivism" as anyone in the world, I do not accept in any way 
the positive polity as M. Comte conceives it, either as to the ancient 
doctrines which he preserves, or as to what he has added of his own. 
I do not conceive either the conditions of order or, as a result, those of 
progress, as he does. And what I say for myself, I might say for all his 
English readers whom I know. I do not believe the practical doctrines 
of M. Comte have made the least advance here. He is known, judged, 
and even opposed, only as a philosopher. In social questions he does 
not count at all. He is himself aware of this, and complains that his 
English admirers accept only his philosophy and reject his polity." 

Altho we are concerned here with Mill's religious ideas (reserved 
in general for another essay) only as directly related to Positivism, it 
may be noted as distinctive of his conception of a "religion of Humanity," 
that he was specially impressed with the high moral demands such a 
religion would make. It is to arouse an intelligent, even if impassioned, 
sense of right and duty. His conception is less emotional and more 
ethical. His own heritage of disbelief very plainly impressed him, — as it 
seldom does those who disbelieve on intellectual rather than moral 
grounds (the latter ground being distinctive in him as in James Mill), — 
with an intensified sense of moral and ethical values. This is to place 
the will above the feelings, and is in contrast with Comte, who would 
by means of religion place emotion — that is, the affections — in charge 
of the will. The Religion of humanity is for him a consecration of the 
affections; for Mill it was an ardent devotion of the will to the ends of 

60 



human society. Two paragraphs may be cited from a letter to Comte 
written about a year after the opening of their correspondence. "Having 
had the fate, very rare in my country, of never believing in God, even 
in my childhood, I have always seen in the creation of a true social 
philosophy the only possible foundation for a universal regeneration of 
human morality, and in the idea of Humanity, the only one which could 
fill the place of the idea of God. But it is a long way from that specula- 
tive belief to the feeling I experience now of the complete adequacy, as 
well as of the near advent, of this inevitable substitution. However well 
prepared one may be, compared with most minds, to undergo the intellect- 
ual consequences of this conviction, it is impossible but that it should 
determine a sort of crisis in the life of every man whose moral nature is 
not too much beneath the duties which it imposes. For the conviction 
either shows clearly that the actual political, and especially moral, regen- 
eration which we have always dreamed of for an indefinite future, has 
really become possible in our own days, and that the time has come when 
the devotion of individuals can truly realize appreciable results for such a 
great cause ; — or else, it produces by an inevitable reaction a bitter feeling 
of various particular shortcomings which tend to make us unworthy such 
a destiny." 

In August e Comte and Positivism Mill undertakes to subject Comte's 
system of thought to an orderly criticism within the compass of two 
of the rather ample philosophical essays customary in the mid-XIXth 
century Reviews. Not only are these articles for English readers, — but 
Mill himself is admittedly a "positivist," — of course only in the same in- 
formal sense in which he is (so to say) "anything." Hence he begins by 
acquitting Positivism of whatever reproach it might bear for English 
readers as a polemic against theology and metaphysics; and for the rest 
applies in the detached way of the logician, — not without an element of 
cool sarcasm, but with unfailing courtesy and warm appreciation, — the 
method of "agreement and difference." Not that Mill throws a sop, as 
the saying is, to the theologians. He never dissimulates, altho he may 
have limited in his lifetime the controversial expression of, his convic- 
tions on the religious question. But he desires to be an impartial judge, 
and there was no reason why Positivism should suffer unnecessarily the 
stigma of "atheism," or even of radical metaphysical scepticism. The 
general theological dogma then, as understood in England, of "creation 
by Intelligence," may be, according to Mill, held by one "accepting the 
Positive mode of thought"; — since, "if the universe had a beginning, 
its beginning was by the very nature of the case, supernatural ; the laws 
of nature cannot account for their own origin." 

Not that such an affirmative belief was allowed by Comte. We are 
necessarily ignorant of origins, and must confine ourselves to the knowl- 
edge of an "ascertained order of events." And if the law of the three 

61 



stages is a veritable law of succession, we are destined to abandon the 
"theological" viewpoint in toto. But Mill thinks we need not apply so 
rigidly the "theory of the progressive stages of opinion." "It is one of 
M. Comte's mistakes that he never allows of open questions." Mill is 
able to clear Positivism more thoroly from a corresponding metaphysical 
reproach. What Comte rejects is Platonic realism, continued, altho 
modified, in Aristotle, and perpetuated in the Schoolmen. Recognizing, 
tho not always mindful, that analysis and criticism of abstractions is a 
part of scientific technique, "what he condemned" — says Mill — "was the 
habit of conceiving these mental abstractions as real entities, which could 
exert power, produce phenomena, and the enunciation of which could 
be regarded as a theory or explanation of facts." The controversy over 
"universals" was a turningpoint in the history of thought, "being its 
first struggle to emancipate itself from the dominion of verbal abstrac- 
tions." "The metaphysical point of view is not a perversion of the 
positive" — that is, class names made entities — "but a transformation of 
the theological." That is to say, "The realization of abstractions was 
not the embodiment" — incarnation, substantialization — "of a word, but 
the gradual disembodiment of a Fetish." The actual historical process, 
as Mill agrees, consisted in the power, first residing in the object and 
causing events not obviously connected with it, being now conceived as 
subsisting quite apart from any objects, and yet causing their activities 
and whatever effects the objects may produce. Bentham had of course 
long since warned Mill against "fictitious entities," and he recognizes the 
more cordially Comte's success in the right application of this method of 
historical criticism. 

Mr. Mill's Westminster Review essays show that his maturer judgment 
did not differ essentially from his earlier impressions of the merits and 
defect of M. Comte's system. The points of agreement make a less 
formidable list than the topics of disagreement, but they are points both 
fundamental and comprehensive. Put in most general terms they may be 
named as follows : Mill accepts Comte's philosophy of history, his classifi- 
cation of the sciences, his doctrine of the "spiritual power" and especially 
of its "separation" from the "temporal," his suggestion of a "seventh" 
science of ethics as the culmination of a positive social statics, the religion 
of Humanity as the inevitable substitute for supernatural faith. In one 
word, he accepts the positive philosophy as a mode of thought primarily, 
"en rejetant les consequences de meme." On the other hand then the 
"consequences" may be classified somewhat in this way: The English 
thinker is opposed to — the "subjection of women," sacerdotalism and 
the organisation of the spiritual power as a priestly corporation, Comte's 
"abandonment" of the positive method in suggesting "pretending" the 
existence of scientific laws in anticipation of discovery; the premature 
completion of sociology, Comte's abandonment of the historical method 

62 



in maintaining his "dangerous" intellectual isolation and suggesting neg- 
ect henceforth of all intellectual monuments except a restricted "library 
of Positivism" ; oversystematization, altruism and the presidency of 
feeling, and what amounts to a monopoly of egoism by Comte himself 
as pontiff of the Humanitarian hierarchy. 

Let us notice some of these points. The cornerstone of Comte's phi- 
losophy of history is the theory that human progress has depended on 
intellectual development. Spencer attacked this by showing in ways 
obvious to Comte as well as to everybody else how man's activity is 
influenced by his feelings. But feeling attitudes towards current ideas are 
themselves the results of previous ideas. "It was not human emotions 
and passions which discovered the motion of the earth, or detected the 
evidence of its antiquity; which exploded Scholasticism and inaugurated 
the exploration of nature; which invented printing and paper, and the 
mariner's compass." Yet revolutions have resulted and will still flow 
from such "discoveries." Progress then is primarily "intellectual," or 
the result of increasing intelligence and knowledge. Now examination 
of the order of the development discloses what Comte took to be a law 
of succession, thru three modes of conceiving the universe. "The passage 
of mankind thru these stages, including the modification of the theological 
conception by the rising influence of the other two, is to M. Comte's 
mind the most decisive fact in the evolution of humanity." This is, so 
to speak, the evolution of the spiritual power. In the "temporal" sphere 
a parallel movement consists in the growing ascendancy of the industrial 
life over the military. The two "powers" are just the development of 
the two aspects of human life — thought and work. Whether the "theo- 
logical" mode of thought and the military mode of active life are neces- 
sarily connected or not, — Comte believes they are, — makes no difference 
in the fact that they declined together and for the same causes — "the 
progress of science and industry." M. Comte is justified in thinking of 
the movement as a "single evolution." 

On these "first principles of social dynamics" Comte bases his two- 
volume review of universal history. "We regard it as by far his greatest 
achievement; except his review of the sciences, and in some respects 
even more striking than that." In this effort the philosophy of history 
is made a science. "We shall not attempt the vain task of abridgement" — 
a remark which may have suggested the very task so successfully done 
oy Harriet Martineau, and which she was engaged upon when M. Comte 
died in 1857. But her volume would fill many reviews. The main fault 
in this synoptic picture Mill thinks is in an unwarranted extension of 
the term "theocracy." Such a regime Comte conceives to consist in a 
government by a priestly caste, but, says Mill, "we believe that no such 
state of things ever existed in the societies commonly cited as theocratic." 
Priest-kings were mere occasional usurpers. Israel was not a political the- 

63 



ocracy. "Priestly rulers only present themselves in two anomalous cases, 
of which next to nothing is known." These are Japan and Thibet; but the 
social system is not one of caste, and the "priestly sovereignty" is nominal. 
Even in India- — and here Mill speaks "by the book," certainly — where the 
caste system exists and the influence of the sacerdotal class is the greatest 
on record, a Hindoo king is only nominally limited in despotic power by 
the Brahmins. But Comte regards almost all the societies of antiquity as 
theocratic, excepting the Greek and Roman. 

The "only other imperfection" is some minor failure in interpreting 
English phenomena, chiefly in assigning no "positive influences" to 
Protestantism; which however makes demands on intelligence by instill- 
ing a feeling of direct individual responsibility to God ; — "almost wholly 
a creation of Protestantism." Whatever their spirit of orthodoxy, "belief 
was to be sought and found by the believer" without mediation. "The 
avoidance of error thus became in great measure a question of culture," 
and a powerful intellectual incentive. Protestant countries not having 
state churches, are examples — especially Scotland and the New England 
states. But these are matters "of detail." Mill says of Comte's histori- 
cal review in general: "The chain of causation by which he connects 
the spiritual and temporal life of each era with one another and with 
the entire series, will be found, we think, in all essentials, irrefragable." 
"We find no fundamental errors in M. Comte's general conception of 
history." It is characteristic of Mill's own mode of thought that he found 
Comte "singularly exempt" from exaggeration either of particular or of 
general causes. His is neither a mere great man theory nor like Buckle's, 
deterministic to a point of fatalism. Intellectual progress involves moral 
development, and casual factors are important as well as general laws. 
Also, "all political truth he deems strictly relative," and few have de- 
fended this doctrine so effectively. While "placing in the strongest light" 
the imperfections which made all societies transient, he "accords with 
generous recognition the gratitude due to all who . . . contributed mate- 
rially to the work of human improvement." Useful and necessary, in 
part at least, were all philosophies and societies. The theological and the 
metaphysical modes of thought brought men from savagery to civiliza- 
tion. He lauds the great personalities from Thales to Fourier and de 
Blainville; from Homer to Manzoni. He esteems very highly the influ- 
ence of Christianity, and over-estimates for English opinion in general — 
but not for Mill — the virtues of the "Catholic period." And not only are 
the "great men of Christianity from St. Paul to St. Francis" celebrated by 
him, but even the great modern men in a Church no longer advancing 
with the world; such as "Fenelon and St. Vincent de Paul, Bossuet and 
Joseph de Maistre." "A more comprehensive, and, in the primitive sense 
of the term, catholic, sympathy and reverence towards real worth, and 
every kind of service to humanity, we have not met with in any thinker." 

64 



"Neither is his a cramped and contracted notion of human excellence, 
which cares only for certain forms of development." Poetry and the 
arts have high moral values, "by their mixed appeal" to emotions and 
intellect, educating the feelings of "abstract thinkers," and enlarging 
the "intellectual horizon" of the worldly. 

But after this "profound and comprehensive" view of social progress, 
Mill fails to find "any scientific connection between his theoretical ex- 
planation" of this progress, and his "proposals of future improvement." 
These are not "recommended" as what society has been working towards 
thruout history. "They rest as completely, each on its separate reason 
of authority, as with philosophers who, like Bentham, theorize on politics 
without any historical basis at all." The only connection between Comte's 
'historical speculations" and "practical conclusions," "is the inference," 
that since the old social powers both of thought and of life are disap- 
pearing, leaving the "two rising powers, positive thinkers" and "leaders 
of industry," the "future necessarily belongs to these: spiritual power to 
the former, temporal to the latter. As a specimen of historical forecast 
this is very deficient ; for are there not the masses as well as the leaders 
of industry ? and is not theirs also a growing power ?" At any rate, Mill 
thinks that Comte's conception of the mode of organizing and utilizing 
these powers is "grounded on anything rather than on history." And 
he remarks as a "singular anomaly" in so great a thinker, that Comte, — 
after bringing "ample evidence" of the slow growth of the sciences, all 
of which except mathematics and astronomy are, "as he justly thinks," 
far from a positive stage, — should speak as if the "mere institution of a 
positive science of sociology were tantamount to its completion" ; as if all 
conflict of opinion in this department were due to the theological and 
metaphysical modes of thinking, and could be at once resolved by the 
introduction of the positive method, and harmony among thinkers at once 
ensue, just as in the case of inorganic sciences. "Happy would be the 
prospects of mankind if this were so. A time such as M. Comte reckoned 
upon may come; unless something stops the progress of human im- 
provement, it is sure to come, but after an unknown duration of hard 
thought and violent controversy." "Decomposition" has gone on for 
fourteen centuries and is not yet ended. "The shell of the old edifice 
will remain standing until there is another to replace it; and the new 
synthesis is barely begun, nor is even the preparatory analysis com- 
pletely finished." In other cases Comte knows the difference between a 
method and a science itself, and the right application of the "right proc- 
esses" is harder than their discovery. And this is truest of sociology, 
where the facts are more complicated and dependent on a greater "con- 
course of forces" than in any other science. In this complicated field 
the difficulty of a deductive method is enormously increased, while the 
vast scope of variable factors in the phenomena reduces induction to an 

65 



empirical value. Agreement in results, and impartial judgment, are most 
uncertain; — a condition greatly aggravated by the unlimited influence 
of "interests" and predilections. So that, Mill concludes (alluding to 
sociological inquirers), "the hope of such accordance of opinion as would 
obtain, in mere deference to their authority, the universal assent which 
M. Comte's scheme of society requires, must be adjourned to an indefinite 
distance." 

Mill suggests that Comte's terms, "theological, metaphysical, positive," 
designating the historical succession of modes of thought, would be more 
intelligible and less liable to misapprehension for English readers, if others 
were substituted like, "Personal or Volitional, Abstractional or Ontologi- 
cal, Phenomenal (objective) or Experiential (subjective aspect)." Others 
might be employed — as, the animistic, the theological and the natural 
modes ; the supernatural, the superrational and the rational ; or, the an- 
thropomorphic, the hypostatic, the impersonal ; or, spiritism, metaphysical 
realism and concrete realism. At any rate, the endeavor to formulate 
substitute triads aids in gaining insight into Comte's "law." 

If human progress be in first instance progressive in speculative method, 
then the sciences will have passed in a different order thru the character- 
istic stages of this development. Thus a classification of sciences becomes 
a philosophic doctrine of first importance. Comte first distinguishes 
"abstract" from "concrete" sciences. "The abstract sciences have to do 
with the laws which govern the elementary facts of nature; laws on 
which all phenomena actually realized must of course depend," but which 
would equally explain an indefinite number of other possible combina- 
tions. A "concrete" science is a system of the laws of a class of actually 
existent combinations. Thus mineralogy is concrete, while physics and 
chemistry are concerned with abstract laws of "mechanical aggregation 
and chemical union" in general. With laboratory events mineralogy has 
nothing to do; but only with naturally existent aggregates and com- 
pounds. Similarly, of the biological sciences physiology is an abstract 
system of the general laws of organic life; zoology and botany, concrete 
systems of the phenomena of existing or extinct species. Abstract science 
deals with each law in all its aspects and possible effects. Concrete science 
considers laws only in combination and in manifestation. Mr. Mill 
examines Mr. Spencer's different distinction of the sciences under the 
same terms. For him geometry is abstract because its truths are ideal, 
with no necessary empirical reference ; but biology and chemistry are con- 
crete, because however general their laws, there are observable instances 
of their existence and operation. According to Spencer, a geometrical 
truth is not exactly true of real things; or, a mechanical law like inertia 
is "involved" in experience, but not seen except in partially unsuccessful 
conflict with other laws. Mill objects to this, that it "classifies truths not 
according to their subject-matter or their mutual relations, but according 

66 



to an unimportant difference in the manner in which we come to know 
them." Mill observes that there are truths in physiology which are 
known only indirectly ; — are these then abstract ? The usage is not above 
reproach in either philosopher, "but of the two distinctions M. Comte's 
answers to by far the deepest and most vital difference." The Germanic 
construction will not weaken the force of this statement. "The distinc- 
tive attributes" of the two sorts of science "are summed up by M. 
Comte in the expression, that concrete science refers to Beings, or Ob- 
jects, abstract science to Events." 

Obviously the concrete sciences are the first cultivated — in the sense 
that investigation and generalization start with "spontaneous facts"; but 
their scientific form depends both logically and temporally on the develop- 
ment of the abstract sciences. Now in this point of view there are as yet 
no concrete sciences — astronomy possibly excepted — strictly speaking, 
"but only materials for science." Comte's classification therefore is of the 
"abstract" sciences. His principle conforms to the conditions of our 
study of nature. It is a fact that all phenomena are in the same sphere 
of uniformities ; as we discover new laws, those already established con- 
tinue operative, in increasing complexity of combination. Take the 
mathematical group for example: — number (itself including arithmetic 
and algebra), geometry, mechanics: "the truths of number are true of 
all things and depend only on their own laws." "Geometry can be studied 
independently of all sciences except that of number." Rational me- 
chanics requires the laws of number and extension and, in addition, of 
equilibrium and motion. (Conversely we see algebra and geometry inde- 
pendent of these last.) Astronomy requires further, gravitation, — not 
affecting the others. Physics presupposes all four sciences named, — 
all terrestrial physics being affected by the mutual motions of the earth 
and heavenly bodies. Chemistry involves all the preceding laws, especially 
the physical laws of heat and electricity, and adds its own peculiar ones. 
Physiology and other biological sciences (as we call them) exhibit an 
equally obvious and inclusive dependence, while adding a whole new — 
and as yet the most important and complicated — system of laws, those of 
the organism, including vital phenomena. Lastly, "The phenomena of 
human society obey laws of their own, but do not depend solely upon 
these: they depend upon all the laws of organic and animal life, together 
with those of inorganic nature, these last influencing society not only 
thru their influence on life, but by determining the physical conditions 
under which society has to be carried on." 

The logical law of this classification has been quoted (above) from 
Comte himself, in its most succinct and (as Mill says) well-expressed 
form. Mill quotes an even more concise formula: "Chacun de ces 
degres successif s exige des inductions qui lui sont propres ; mais elles ne 
peuvent jamais devenir systematiques que sous l'impulsion deductive 

67 



resultee de tous les ordres moins compliques." We shall not notice here 
other subdivisions than those of number, already mentioned, but conclude 
this account by observing that Comte's classification of the (abstract) 
sciences includes six, — mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, 
biology, sociology. Needless to say, Comte gets into some difficulty in 
his subdivisions, and much controversy resulted. Mr. Spencer offered 
a more elaborate system, which was ably attacked by M. Littre. Mill 
concludes — with all respect due to a real peer of Comte in power of 
organization — against Spencer. Comte's system answers best his purpose 
— of illustrating in scientific development the historical law of the three 
stages or modes of thought. Spencer holds there is a consensus rather 
than a hierarchy of the sciences. But he confuses (thinks Mill) the 
empirical and the "scientific stage" of development. In the former alone 
the fields of investigation are independent. It is empirical truths that the 
"later" sciences lend to the "earlier" — or at most "elementary scientific 
truth," of the sort "easily ascertainable by direct experiment." M. Comte 
did not neglect this observation. But it remains true, and crucial, that 
the "later" absolutely depend for their really "scientific" form upon the 
simpler and more comprehensive laws of the "earlier" sciences. "The 
truths of the simpler sciences are a part of the laws to which the phe- 
nomena of the more complex sciences conform." These laws are indis- 
pensable to their explanation, and must be so well-known as to be "trace- 
able thru complex combinations," in order to discover the special laws of 
the science in question. "This is all that M. Comte affirms," says Mill, 
"and enough for his purpose." 

The combination of these two great doctrines will imply that the more 
"special" the science, the "tardier" its progress from stage to stage, so 
that one may be "completely positive" while another is still "metaphysical" 
and yet another "theological." Obviously certain truths were from the 
first "excepted from the theological explanation"; this would be true of 
mathematics, which is not susceptible of a theological, tho it is of a meta- 
physical, explanation or interpretation. Thus is laid the foundation for 
positive development. But we have only to advance to astronomy to 
reach an instance where the theological lingered later, especially because 
of the inaccessibility of the objects ; and only with Newton did the meta- 
physical era close. Increasing power of prediction and control undermine 
the "voluntary" stage; lack of these powers preserves it. Men pray for 
rain, or victory/ or against accident or disease, but not "to arrest the 
tides," — since King Canute ! Vestiges of primitive thought "linger in the 
more intricate departments" of the most positive sciences. But the meta- 
physical has better staying powers, being more hospitable to the idea of 
law. Incidentally, this made possible valuable service in hastening the 
decay of the theological. In Comte's view only astronomy is free from 
metaphysical entities. This may be true (or may have been, before de 

68 



Morgan) of mathematics; but Comte's usage of metaphysical must be 
scrutinized. For example, the idea of chemical affinity means, he thinks, 
belief in "entities" residing in bodies and causing them to combine; 
otherwise, the statement of the law would be an identical proposition. 
But Mill notes that affinities are preferential tendencies to certain com- 
binations in fixed proportions. The stronger tendency always prevails, 
so that A "detaches" B from C, not in some, but in all, cases. This was 
a "positive generalization," — as positive as the more complex law of 
"elective chemical combination" that superseded it. The most notable 
scientific advancement since Mill's day is in the biological sciences, but 
biology then was rife with scholastic, metaphysical and animistic entities. 
The results were harmful, in misdirecting inquiry. Chemistry became 
positive with Lavoisier ; biology with Bichat, who "drew the fundamental 
distinction between nutritive or vegetative and properly animal life, and 
referred the properties of organs to the general laws of the component 
tissues." 

"The most complex of all, the Social, had not, he maintained, become 
positive at all, but was the subject of an ever-renewed and barren contest 
between the theological and metaphysical modes of thought." To make 
this positive, bringing all theoretic science to its final stage, was Comte's 
aim, — achieved for him in the latter half of his Philosophie positive. But 
"positive," no more than metaphysical, was a consistent term with Comte. 
All science is at all times to a degree positive, being based on experience 
and observation. Comte of course admitted the existence of positive 
sociological data, and that the best writers on the highest subjects had 
consciously discarded the primitive modes of thought ; as Montesquieu, — 
"even Macchiavelli" ; — Turgot, Adam Smith and all the economists ; Ben- 
tham and his initiates. All these believed in, and sought for, "invariable 
laws" of social phenomena, thus making sociological inquiry positive 
before Comte, — who made the greatest contribution to the method of 
such inquiry. "What he really meant by making a science positive, is 
what we will call, with M. Littre, giving it its final scientific constitution." 
This meant, discovering laws of society which would be to its phenomena 
what the law of gravitation is to astronomy, — in its scope and impor- 
tance. This quest was the incentive of Comte's whole career. And he 
undertook a "wonderful systematization" of all the sciences. In this 
"philosophy of science," — the nature of which Mill felt it necessary to 
explain as, "in one word, the logic of the sciences," — Comte accom- 
plished his task for the first five of the sciences with the most admirable 
success. Never has "the way to a complete rationalizing of those sci- 
ences" been elsewhere shown so well. But here, if anywhere, Mill will 
find logical defects. M. Comte's philosophy of science excels in treat- 
ment of the "methods of investigation," rather than of the "requisites of 
proof." He confines himself chiefly to the former, and "treats it with 

69 



a degree of perfection hitherto unrivalled." His survey of our intellectual 
resources for the investigation of natural laws is incomparable. But on 
the question how we shall test the validity of results, "M. Comte throws 
nO light." He rejects the syllogism (as useful, Mill notes, as it is inade- 
quate) but substitutes nothing. "And of induction he has no canons 
whatever." According to Comte, accounting for the facts does not prove 
a theory — as the ether; he insists on verification, — that a hypothesis 
must not only be consistent with the facts, but they impossible without 
it. Needing then a "test of inductive proof," he yet seems to "give up as 
impracticable the main probem of Logic properly so-called." Comte 
speaks at first of a doctrine of method in the abstract, "as conceivable, 
but not needful" ; and ends by condemning the study of logic, except in 
its applications in the several sciences, "as chimerical." 

Mill considers that Comte's "determined abstinence from the word and 
the idea of cause, had much to do with his inability to conceive an Induc- 
tive Logic, by diverting his attention from the only basis upon which it 
could be founded." This basis is the distinction between laws of the 
sequence or coexistence of phenomena, and unconditioned causal laws. 
The former are dependent on the latter, and in final analysis on the ulti- 
mate law that every phenomenon has a phenomenal cause. That day and 
night alternate is a law of sequence, conditioned on the alternating "pres- 
ence and absence of the sun." Now however this may be conditioned — as 
by the rotation of the earth — it is unconditioned as the cause of the suc- 
cession of day and night. The ultimate laws are therefore themselves 
phenomenal; but there is a difference between Kepler's laws and the 
law of gravitation. Mill opines also, that M. Comte was not "at bottom 
so solicitous about completeness of proof as becomes a positive philoso- 
pher, and the unimpeachable objectivity, as he would have called it, of a 
conception was not with him an indispensable condition of adopting it, if 
it was subjectively useful by affording facilities to the mind for grouping- 
phenomena." 

Another "aberration" of method, equally "unphilosophical," is Conite's 
rejection of psychology — sufficiently discussed above for our purpose — in 
condemning introspection, psychological observation proper, "as an in- 
valid process." Mill is "almost ashamed to say," that phrenology is 
Comte's substitute; but does him the justice to add that he accepts only 
(as yet) the division of the brain into "the three regions of the propensi- 
ties, the sentiments and the intellect, and the subdivision of the latter 
region between the organs of meditation and those of observation." Mill 
thinks psysiology has tended to discredit phrenology more and more, and 
points out that if its theory were true, psychological observation would 
still be necessary, since the correspondence between functions and organs 
could be ascertained only by observing both. To establish a relation 
"between mental functions and cerebral conformations" requires not only 

70 



parallel series of observations, but, as Comte admits, an analysis of the 
rimitive faculties apart from physical conditions, for separate evidence 
f mental divisions corresponding to the alleged organs. And this analysis 
demands a perfected psychology. 

The "weakest part" of Comte's treatise, according to Mill, is his "un- 
satisfactory attempt to trace the outline of social statics." Here there 
s nothing original, "unless his revival of the Catholic idea of a Spiritual 
Power may be so considered." Both agree that Aristotle perfected static 
politics as far as could be done without a canon of progress. A spiritual 
power exercising universal intellectual authority in society, — the ascen- 
dancy over opinion, of the most eminent thinkers, — and unanimous defer- 
ence of those who "know much to those who know still more," will 
come spontaneously into existence only when unanimity is attained, — 
'without which it is neither desirable nor possible." Such a legitimate 
'power" will derive no strength but rather weakness from organization. 
In Comte's general philosophy of sociology the "inversion of the rela- 
tion between deduction and induction" is characteristic of the method. 
This view of method Mill thinks "very instructive." It varies from 
ordinary scientific method in other fields, by whose analogy social science 
would be the system of deductions from general laws of human nature 
(formulated from consideration of individual feelings and actions), 
verified by history. But this method is inadequate in sociology, because of 
the influence of social history itself over human nature ; so that whereas 
in other sciences "specific experience commonly serves to verify" deduc- 
tive laws, in sociology it is "specific experience which suggests the laws, 
and deduction which verifies them." If a supposed historical law of society 
contradicts the known laws of human nature, the historical law must be 
vitiated by a misinterpretation of historical events and processes, and so 
fails of verification by the deductive laws of human nature. If on the 
other hand a social law generalized from historical data affiliates with the 
established laws of human nature — if the actual course of events can 
be seen to be what "human nature" (and its environment) lead us to 
expect — "sociology becomes a science." The method demands that de- 
ductive psychological laws (as Mill would say) shall verify historical in- 
ductive generalizations. This method means practically that, owing to 
the very complexity of social facts, it is necessary to study them together 
rather than separately, or in separate groups. Mill speaks of necessary 
"limitations" to be observed in the application of this method. One is 
this: that we may take into account only a definite number of variable 
factors in a problem, assuming for the immediate purpose in view, that 
other actually variable elements are constant. 

Mill finds initial difficulties in Comte's political theory also, due to his 
attempt to apply systematically the law of the three stages. It is not 
true that all political thinkers have drawn their doctrines either from 

71 



divine law or from absractions. Or it is true only as regards a rule of 
human and social conduct. The visible actions of mankind were never 
given an animistic or an abstract reference, altho general phenomena, 
including change in human wills, may have been referred to gods. We 
have seen Mill taking exception to M. Comte's categorical statement 
that historical and contemporary sociology contained no positive elements 
at all. He finds a parallel fault in the fundamental thesis of his political 
criticism. For Comte all political philosophy has been and is divided 
between the theological and the metaphysical modes of theorizing. But 
Mill maintained that when the doctrine of divine right whether of kings 
or popes became out of date, not one, but many, rival theories arose. 
"All theories in which the ultimate standard of institutions and rules of 
action was the happiness, and observation and experience the guides (and 
some such there have been in all periods of free speculation), are entitled 
to the name Positive, whatever, in other respects, their imperfections 
may be." To be sure, such utilitarian and empirical types of political 
thought are rare; and Comte is right in "affirming that the prevailing 
schools of moral and political speculation, when not theological, have 
been metaphysical." And Mill notes that progress has been chiefly due 
to the fact that the "petty military communities" escaped the "delusion" 
that all public law was divinely given. Generally the conception of Nat- 
ural Rights supervened, and persisted until it emerged as the basis of 
the modern negative philosophy of revolution. Lawyers succeeded theolo- 
gians as "legislators of opinion." The descent may be traced from the 
Greek metaphysicians, thru the Roman jurists and the Continental lawyers 
to the writers on international law. These last were the first -" systematiz- 
es of morals in Christian Europe, on any other than a purely theological 
basis," and so stamped ethics as well as politics with metaphysical char- 
acter. This philosophy reached the climax of its destructive power and 
its constructive impotence, with Rousseau and the French revolution; 
and by its lack of "positive" genius succumbed to a monarchical and 
ecclesiastical reaction. Thus the two modes of thought are left both 
extant, tho the "later" mode suffers discredit from the partial failure it 
recorded at its golden opportunity. 

The exception Mill takes to Comte's review of political thought is of 
course in reference to English communities. For France and the Con- 
tinent the account is correct enough. But with the English, when "divine 
right died out with the Jacobites," not natural right but custom and 
expediency, became the basis of even popular political opinion. English 
political preferences, in government and law, are tested by practical 
consequences. Even the industrial radicals add "more substantial reasons" 
to their appeals to abstract right. "Thus far and no farther" — asserts 
Mill — "does metaphysics prevail in the region of English politics." In 
ethics however, "a still deeper and more vital part" of social existence, 

72 



Mill admits (sadly no doubt) that opinion is either theological or meta- 
physical. The "intuitive morality," nay, the "whole a priori philosophy," 
including physical science — induction's first conquest, — "has the universal 
diagnostic of the metaphysical mode of thought, in the Comtean sense of 
the word." 

This "Comtean sense" is however otherwise seriously misapplied. Es- 
pecially is this true of the main "articles of the liberal creed," which Mill 
defends against this imputation. A flood of light is thrown on Comte's 
standpoint when Mill tells us — "Whatever goes by the different names of 
the revolutionary, the radical, the democratic, the liberal, the f reethinking, 
the sceptical, or the negative and critical school or party in religion, 
politics or philosophy, all passes with him under the designation of meta- 
physical . . ." All this order of doctrines are "mere instruments of 
attack upon the old system, with no permanent validity as social truth." 
Such are the doctrines of liberty of conscience, of "equality," and of the 
sovereignty of the people. Comte does not require the legal, but moral, 
repression of individual opinion. Or rather, he demands the acceptance 
of intellectual authority by a people instructed in every department of 
science, — including sociology and, presumably, ethics, in their positive 
scientific form, — so that they will voluntarily receive authoritative opin- 
ions on all social questions, exactly as they would in the case of any of 
the sciences. Comte feels that the very complexity of social problems 
makes ignorant error all the more fatal. So it is the moral right of indi- 
vidual judgment as such, which Comte denies. But Mill thinks such an 
a prioi solution yields a sort of truth liable to "perversion," and entitled 
to consideration only in a concrete situation. 

"The doctrine of Equality meets no better fate at M. Comte's hands." 
It is nothing but a traditional dogmatic protest. The necessity of co- 
operation, natural differences of ability, require subordination, with recog- 
nition of course of the moral worth of men as men. True enough. But 
it never occurs to Comte to consider whether, with proper education, 
people will not "spontaneously" class themselves more effectively. The 
sovereignty of the people too Mill maintains against Comte, has a "posi- 
tive" aspect. It is not mere radical metaphysics. In its practical and 
constructive character it is the demand for government with the consent 
of — and the participation of — the governed. 

One more question Mill raises reflects his dominant interests and illus- 
trates further his judicial attitude. He challenges as a radical defect 
in Comte's system of theory his depreciation of political economy, — 
only paralleled by his attitude towards psychology. The economists 
seem to share his disdain for the independent specialists in all the 
sciences. His technique requires that all social phenomena shall be studied 
in their ensemble. Mill appropriately defends the economists from the 
imputation of pursuing their inquiries without reference to the social sig- 

73 



nificance of economic facts. He acquits them of the delusion that their 
various theories of economic institutions are exactly true semper ubique. 
They merely believe that an understanding of the complicated economic 
machinery of Europe will enable one to predicate much of economic situa- 
tions which do, or would, exist under difference of conditions. Mill 
points out that narrow minds will "draw narrow conclusions" from any 
science. He adds, — "The only security against this narrowness is a liberal 
mental cultivation, and all it proves is that a person is not likely to be a 
good political economist who is nothing else." 

CONCLUSION 

The unique interest which has always attached to J. S. Mill's System of 
Logic is due to the human interest which he contrived to inject into the 
study of abstract scientific method, by including the "social science" among 
the subjects to which this method is applicable. The last book of the 
two-volume work, that on the Logic of the Moral Sciences, seeks to lay 
the foundations of a scientific sociology. Science begins spontaneously 
and instinctively. "Principles of evidence and theories of method are 
not to be constructed a priori." "The way of attaining an end is seen as it 
were instinctively by superior minds in some comparatively simple case, 
and is then, by judicious generalization, adapted to the variety of com- 
plex cases. We learn to do a thing in difficult circumstances, by attending 
to the manner in which we have spontaneously done the same thing in 
easy ones." The sciences which relate to himself, the "most complex 
and most difficult, subject of study on which the human mind can be 
engaged," are, according to Mill, "still abandoned to the uncertainties of 
vague and popular discussion." All others have emerged from a purely 
empirical state. Of human sciences the psychological, tho not free from 
uncertainty, are fairly organized, especially as to method; but the "laws 
of mind," and yet more, the laws of society, are a subject of disagree- 
ment, even as to their mere existence. "Here therefore if anywhere, the 
principles laid down in the preceding books may be expected to be useful." 
Here Mill humanizes logic: it becomes not only method of science, but 
universal method; method of intelligence. For it cannot be that the 
"proper study of mankind" is alone to defeat philosophy's efforts to 
rescue it from empiricism. "Consciously and deliberately" the processes 
which revealed simpler laws must construct human and social laws. This 
must be the way, and the only way, to "remove this blot upon the face of 
science," — human self-ignorance. Without then pretending to construct 
actually the sciences of ethology and politics, Mill will emulate Bacon in 
pointing the way — with a logical sign-post. Comte as we have seen was 
willing to undertake the final constitution of the social science, and denied 
that method could be constructed abstractly, but was to be studied only 

74 



in the cultivation of the sciences themselves. This inquiry of Mill's then 
was to examine which of the logical methods are best suited to sociological 
investigations and "moral" sciences, the peculiar advantages or disadvan- 
tages of such employment, how far wrong choice or lack of skill in 
method account for the state of these inquiries, and what improvement 
may result from correcting such defects. In a word, do, or can, "moral 
sciences" exist, how far may they be perfected, and by what type of 
method can this best be done? 

The first question that confronts us is, whether human behavior can be 
reduced to scientific laws. Mill, as we have shown in the essay on the 
Problem of Freedom, answers with an emphatic yes. But, althb somewhat 
inclined to a scientific dogmatism, he declines to surrender human moral 
liberty to it. He begins the inquiry therefore by establishing firmly the 
genuineness of this liberty, as not conflicting with its natural causation, — 
wthout however any mysterious constraint which makes it an illusion. It 
is probable that Mill does not do full justice to the (perhaps not entirely 
explained) spontaneity of our volitions, but he does great service in 
breaking the spell of such words as "necessity," cause, law and the like, by 
abstracting from their moral meanings. On the whole he steers very 
steadily between the Scylla of apologetic intuitionism and the Charybdis 
of a fixed order of natural events. "It would be more correct to say 
that matter is not bound by necessity, than that mind is so." The will of 
man then is not bound, tho limited in its prerogative, but it is itself 
a natural phenomenon, and as such a product of natural forces and 
controlled by natural laws. 

This point settled, the next question is, is a "science of human nature" 
possible? Certainly the complexity, even caprice, of man's acts, cannot 
exclude such a science. Meteorology, "tidology," are sciences, theoreti- 
cally and practically, altho not of astronomic exactitude. But such an 
exactitude would mean in a human inquiry, that "it would have attained 
the ideal perfection of a science if it enabled us to foretell how an individ- 
ual would think, feel or act, thruout life," just as we predict eclipses. 
"It needs scarcely be stated that nothing approaching to this can be 
done." Such a thing we may add, is inconceivable anyway, and the 
result useless even if it were possible. "Prediction" of that, the like of 
which has never yet happened, is unthinkable. That which is sui generis 
must have already occurred at least once, in order to be foretold ! We 
are not gods. Even the astronomic perfection of all science would give 
us only natural knowledge, not supernatural or magic power, Mill says, 
"as the data are never all given, nor ever precisely alike in different cases, 
we could neither make infallible predictions nor lay down universal 
propositions." He finds his "pou sto" for the science of human nature 
in the fact that it, like the tides, is "determined in an incomparably greater 
degree by general causes," than by the complex of lesser ones. And "an 

75 



approximate generalization is practically, in social inquiries, equivalent to 
an exact one ; that which is only probable when asserted of human beings 
taken individually, being certain when affirmed of the character and col- 
lective conduct of masses." It is then no detriment that this science must 
be based on approximate generalizations. Such "empirical laws should 
connect deductively with the laws of nature from which they result; 
should be resolved into the properties of the causes on which the phe- 
nomena depend. In other words, the science of human nature may be 
said to exist, in proportion as those approximate truths which compose 
a practical knowledge of mankind, can be exhibited as corollaries from 
the universal laws of human nature on which they rest; whereby the 
proper limits of those approximate truths would be shown, and we should 
be enabled to deduce others for any new set of circumstances, in antici- 
pation of specific experience." 

Given man's natural volitional control, and given the possibility of a 
science of human nature, which, tho not as exact as the most complete 
and simplest sciences, would be both theoretically and practically valid, — 
the next step is to examine the "laws of mind," or the psychological basis 
for this science of human nature, which Mill names "Ethology." It is 
to connect psychology with sociology and with ethics. Mill designates 
"phenomena of mind," "the various feelings of our nature, both those 
called physical, and those particularly designated as mental: and by the 
laws of mind I mean the laws according to which those feelings generate 
one another." And the "subject of psychology is the uniformities of 
succession, the laws, whether ultimate or derivative, according to which 
one mental state succeeds another, is caused by, or at least is caused to 
follow, another. Of these laws some are general, others more special." 
Two classes of these most general laws are those of representation and 
those of association. The first, the law of the reinstatement of sensuous 
experience, is "expressed by saying, in the language of Hume, that every 
mental impression has its idea." The latter, "secondary mental states," 
are excited by the former or by each other. Similar ideas excite each, 
other, those habitually experienced in coexistence or sequence do, and 
finally the greater the intensity of either or all of the associated impres- 
sions, the greater the susceptibility to excitation and conjoint recurrence. 
Mill thinks the complex mental laws spring from these simple elements, 
but not always by mere "composition of causes"; they are generated by 
a kind of "mental chemistry." But he is not satisfied — as were Hartley 
and James Mill — that all higher forms of ideation, including emotions and 
volitions, are similarly generated from the elements of sensation. And 
even if they were, we could not reduce them again to these elements; 
they cannot be decomposed. Hence nothing can take the place of an 
independent study of the special properties of these complexes. Thus 
we take "belief," or "desire," as they exist, and inquire as to their intui- 

76 



tive or natural objects; altho we may also analyze them into their 
psychological elements; and Mill thinks the laws of association will be 
appreciable in the relations of the most complex ideas. 

Next the influence of bodily upon mental states must be determined, 
whether constitutional, or due to the "mental history" of an individual. 
Mill thought the existing state of physical psychology proved a close con- 
nection between mental tendencies and organic differences, affecting espe- 
cially the quality and intensity of sensations. The detailed explanation 
of mental characterstics then must be immensely aided, even altho it can 
never be made complete, by knowledge of the laws of mind, — in a word, 
by psychology. And much assistance will be gained by connecting this 
science with the biological sciences, by employment of the method of 
"concomitant variations." 

"Ethology, the deductive science, is a system of corollaries from psy- 
chology, the experimental science." The laws of mind are the abstract 
philosophy of human nature, and the basis of the "science of the forma- 
tion of human character," — that is, ethology. The laws of this science 
would consist not of the empirical generalizations arrived at from sys- 
tematic observation of human and social phenomena, but of the "causal 
laws," mainly psychological laws, but also physical laws, which account 
for these phenomena, and with which the empirical laws must be brought 
into harmony. No other method is possible, because not only is an experi- 
mental method, in a scientific sense, incapable of any conclusive applica- 
tion; but, a fortiori, the method of observation is impossible too. Only 
approximations could ever result. Every least condition affects in degree 
the actions of every individual, and the complexity is endless, ever-varying 
and completely bewildering. From such effects it is a hopeless task to 
trace directly the causal laws. Yet they may be actually few and simple ; 
at least a few simple laws may be accountable for most of the given 
phenomena, since a simple law may have varied effects. 

Thus, if psychology means the "science of the elementary laws of mind, 
ethology will stand for the subordinate science which determines the kind 
of character produced, in conformity to those general laws, by any set of 
circumstances, physical or moral." "The laws of the formation of 
character are, in short, derivative laws resulting from the general laws 
of the mind; and they are to be obtained by deducing them from those 
general laws, by supposing any given set of circumstances, and then con- 
sidering what, according to the laws of mind, will be the influence of 
those circumstances on the formation of character." Mill conceives this 
as an exact science, because it truths are "real laws." Yet its propositions 
are "hypothetical only, and affirm tendencies, not facts." "They must not 
assert that something will always or certainly happen, but only that such 
and such will be the effect of a given cause, so far as it operates uncoun- 
teracted." "The principles of ethology are properly the middle principles, 

77 



the "axiomata media" (as Bacon would have said) of the science of 
mind," mediating between the mere empirical generalizations of phe- 
nomena, and the highest generalizations of the social science. Mill points 
out that altho "mankind have not one universal character," "there exist 
universal laws of the formation of character;" and observes that the 
error of the ancients was not in making the largest generalizations first, 
but in doing so without inductive "warrant," or verification, — which Mill 
makes an integral part of deduction. 

In reflecting generally on the social science, Mill observes that the 
current preoccupation with "fructifera experimenta," almost excludes 
the "lucifera," or merely informing kinds of study. It is a case of the 
"art" as against the theory and method of science, resulting in social 
investigations, as in other fields, in quackery, or at least in mistaken 
methods. These methods he criticizes as respectively, the "chemical or 
experimental," the "geometrical or abstract," the "physical or concrete 
deductive" and the "historical or inverse deductive." That Mill should 
say, "in social phenomena the composition of causes is the universal 
law," while in mental phenomena complexes are chemically generated, is 
striking. This position leads to the rejection (well justified, for that mat- 
ter) of "chemical" sociology. Mill thinks its practitioners more scholas- 
tic than Baconian, — as they deem themselves. The difficulties of experi- 
ment and observation here again interfere with the application of logical 
method, whether of "difference," or the "indirect method of difference," 
or that of "residues." How are you to get an "experimentum crucis"? 
For comparison, we need instances exactly alike excepting in the one 
phenomenon to be accounted for. This is even less possible in the "indi- 
rect" method, when there is the same requirement for classes of instances. 
The method of agreement has been shown elsewhere in the Logic to be 
of little value in "cases admitting plurality of causes" ; and social phe- 
nomena are the extreme in this respect. As for the method of residues, 
much false history is an example of the fallacies it leads to. Without 
the aid of psychology and ethology, the phenomena may easily be attri- 
buted to causes in no way responsible, and hit upon simply because they 
are the only ones the complicated facts of the situation seem to suggest. 

The error of the mathematical sociologists is, not in failing to under- 
stand that it is a deductive science, but that they have a geometrical ideal of 
deductive method. Now in geometry there are no conflicting and counter- 
acting causes to account for. Mechanics or physics would be a nearer 
analogy to social phenomena in this respect. The geometrical method 
leads to the founding of social science on certain definitions and axioms, — 
like Hobbes' principle that all government is based on fear. But he is 
obliged to supplement this with a social contract; and Mill calls this a 
"double sophism," as using a "fiction for fact," and basing a theory on 
a mere practical maxim, — thus begging the question. Or again, the "inter- 

78 



est-philosophy of the Bentham school," — founded on a maxim, and an 
ambiguous one. Mill's distinction is that in a "succession of men," — 
the majority of a body, — personal interest will govern most of their 
conduct, and he gives the school the "benefit of this more rational state- 
ment of their fundamental maxim." But he finds the theorems of their 
political philosophy fallacious, because the original premises of their 
reasoning explain specific effects by means of one cause, and ignore the 
concourse of causes. It was a mistake more of form than of substance, — 
in taking the "mere polemics of the day" for the social science. They 
made it is true many "allowances" for the inadequacy of their theory; 
but, Mill remarks, "there is little chance of making amends in the super- 
structure of a theory for the want of sufficient breadth in its founda- 
tions." 

There are according to Mill two methods respectively valid in two kinds 
of sociological inquiries. The "physical method," analogous to that of 
the higher physical sciences, is the true method of sociology proper, — the 
science of society. For, "however complex the phenomena, all their 
sequences and coexistences result from the laws of the separate elements." 
This method may be called the "concrete deductive." There is another 
sociological inquiry aiming at a science of the "states of society." For this 
the "historical, or inverse deductive" method is necessary. This latter 
has been discussed and illustrated in our study of the correspondence 
with Comte. In regard to the physical method we note first that in insist- 
ing on the deductive nature of sociological laws Mill lays the empirical 
emphasis, remarking that "the ground of confidence in any concrete de- 
ductive science is not a priori reasoning, but the consilience between its 
results and those of observation a posteriori. Either of these processes 
when divorced from the other diminishes in value as the subject increases 
in complication, and this in so rapid a ratio as soon to become utterly 
worthless; but the reliance to be placed in the concurrence of the two 
sorts of evidence, not only does not diminish in anything like the same 
proportion, but is not necessarily much diminished at all." The deduc- 
tive method often becomes inverted by the complexity of the problem, 
and instead of verifying deductions by observation, — the ordinary "phy- 
sical" method of procedure, — we actually verify by means of the "princi- 
ples of human nature," the "conjectural generalizations from specific 
experience." 

Mill mediates here, in disagreeing with Comte as to the unvarying 
necessity of this latter procedure, which for the French sociologist is (and 
Mill names him as the "greatest living authority on scientific method") 
"inseparably inherent in the nature of sociological speculation." But the 
principle of Mill's distinction of these two methods is illustrated in the 
following: "The deductive science of society does not lay down a the- 
orem, asserting in an universal manner the effect of any cause; but rather 

79 



teaches us how to form the proper theorems for the circumstances of 
any given case. It does not give us the laws of society in general, but 
the means of determining the phenomena of any given society from the 
particular elements or data of that society." Even more illuminating 
is this: "Notwithstanding the universal consensus of the social phe- 
nomena, whereby nothing which takes place in any part of the operations 
of society is without its share of influence on every other part, and not- 
withstanding the paramount ascendancy which the general state of civili- 
zation and social progress in any given society must hence exercise over 
all the partial and subordinate phenomena, it is not the less true that 
different species of social facts are in the main dependent, immediately 
and in the first resort, upon different kinds of causes; and therefore, 
not only may with advantage, but must, be studied apart : just as in the 
natural body we study separately the physiology and pathology of each 
of the principal organs and tissues, altho every one is acted upon by the 
state of all the others; and altho the peculiar constitution and general 
state of health of the organism cooperates with and often preponderates 
over the local causes, in determining the state of any particular organ." 

(p. 2 59-) 

"On these considerations," Mill adds, "is grounded the existence of 
distinct and separate, tho not independent, branches or departments of 
sociological speculation." With regard to the subject of these specula- 
tions, human society, the physical analogy with which Mill is so impressed 
is well brought out in this passage: (p. 586f) "States of society are like 
different constitutions of different ages in the physical frame; they are 
conditions not of one or a few organs or functions, but of the whole or- 
ganism. Accordingly, the information which we possess respecting past 
ages, and respecting the various states of society now existing in different 
regions of the earth, does, when duly analyzed, exhibit such uniformi- 
ties. It is found that when one of the features of a society is in a particu- 
lar state, a state of all the other features, more or less precisely determin- 
ate, always coexists with it." 

The study of Mill's correspondence with Comte, and of his own con- 
struction of the scientific method of sociology, give us then a total view 
of Mill's philosophy, — and especially in connection with his characteristic 
social emphasis, — as one of mediation. It has perhaps the weakness which 
certain thinkers declare belongs to such types of philosophizing, but it has 
also the advantage of being big with possibilities. As Lord Morley says, 
— and Professor Bain had said it long before, — Mill's works have stirred 
"innumerable little pulses of thought." It is not sentimental to say, that 
his influence blends emancipation and consecration in a remarkable man- 
ner. And his philosophy is forward looking, like contemporary pragma- 
tism, — futuristic. Indeed this is its dominant note. It is when his eye 
is on a distant future — and when is it not? — that Mill makes a near ap- 

80 



proach to eloquence and prophecy. He was aware of his limitations — 
they were the limitations of human nature, but no effort to conceal them, 
or to eke them out, by means of a pretense of any artificial or unnautral 
reality. 

With the law of progress therefore he was chiefly preoccupied, and on 
this subject he stands between Comte and their other contemporaries, espe- 
cially in France. He accounted Comte the greater, because he had dis- 
covered that the usual manner of formulating the law of progress directly 
from the study of the historical evolution of societies, states and nations, 
was fallacious, that such studies could never yield more than empirical 
laws, and that these historical generalizations must be correlated with the 
deductive laws of man's mental and moral nature, — the principles which 
would be operative and fundamentally causal in any social situation what- 
soever. With this general conception Mill was in cordial agreement. His 
position differed from Comte's in two main respects however, — in regard 
to the process by which the laws of human nature were reached, and to 
the precise method of verification which should establish logically the 
higher deductions adapted to constitute a law of progress. With refer- 
ence to the first point, Mill felt that the actual laws of a social science 
must wait upon the development of, not psychology merely, but of another 
study — itself dependent upon psychology, and as yet practically non- 
existent, — a study which must be reduced to an exact science, and an 
abstract or deductive one, — the science of moral character. Now Comte 
admired this conception of Mill's, that of an ethology, and knew that its 
subject-matter must form an essential part of social science. But he 
could give no clear position to such a science in his system, because of his 
exaggerated emphasis on physiological psychology as adequate to connect 
biology directly with the principles of sociology. 

The second point of difference with Comte on the general conception of 
a law of progress, the matter of method, is connected with the same 
disparagement of philosophical psychology — or any psychology less physi- 
cal than phrenology. Reflective and introspective psychologizing Comte 
strongly repudiated. Hence his insistence on always studying social 
phenomena in complete ensemble, and invariably using the inverse his- 
torical, and never the physical or direct deductive method, — which he 
deemed always inadequate, — in the final verification and establishment 
of the laws of social science. This attitude must have been due both 
to his confidence in his own philosophical interpretation of history and 
to his confidence in phrenology. For the mechanical character which 
laws of human nature must derive from their purely physical basis, and 
their direct deduction from natural law in the biological sense, seemed to 
Comte to render them so definite and fixed that they might always be 
verified by the historical laws, as representing experience, observation 
and experimentation. 

81 



Now the serious limitations of observation and experiment in social 
phenomena constitute the special methodological difficulty. And ordin- 
arily in restricted investigations specific experience is so little "specific" 
that it must be employed for what approximate verification is possible 
of the psycho-social deductive laws. This is Mill's "direct" or "physical" 
method, — adapted for use in investigations up to, say, a national, or per- 
haps a racial scope. Whereas, the "inverse" method, exclusively insisted 
upon by Comte, was, according to Mill, applicable on a world-wide, or 
say, continental scale. For here the larger and simpler and more general 
laws, or causal factors, are the only ones that can be well distinguished in 
the complex social phenomena, and the resulting empirical laws or histori- 
cal generalizations will be of a higher order of inductive validity. These 
will therefore be (if sound in method) susceptible of verification by the 
deductive principles of the abstract social science. 

Finally, as to the nature of social laws — their degree of certainty and 
denniteness : Mill seems to have been sufficiently impressed with the 
necessary lack of these qualities on the part of all possible empirical gener- 
alizations from history and social life. But he is very sanguine about the 
reduction of psychology to a scientific basis, and of the possibility of an 
exact (practically exact) deductive science of the formation of human 
character. On the other hand he seems to recognize that the laws of 
these sciences, tho natural, and analogous to other natural laws, will be 
yet of an essentially different character. And, tho they will be "phy- 
sical" laws, in the sense of real and active forces, they will not neces- 
sarily or even probably be "physical" in the restricted sense of materialism. 
Physiological psychology may explain and simplify much, but not all, nor 
what is most important humanly and socially. Even on its speculative side, 
psychology will need to be merely a method, altho the only possible method, 
of the science of human nature as such. An abstract science (in the 
Comtean sense) which should tell us just what humanness, as such, is, — 
a metaphysics of human nature, — however analogous in its formal char- 
acter as a system of natural law, would certainly be very different, in 
respect of the realities with which it dealt, from any other recognized or 
possible natural and physical sciences. 



IV. 

JOHN STUART MILL AND RELIGION. 

The "infidelity"— as it was then the fashion to call rejection of Chris- 
tian doctrine — of James Mill was exceptional in being fundamentally a 
moral revolt. Whatever may be thought of its justification, its motives 
were both intelligent and noble. They were neither partisan nor selfish, 

82* 



even tho some may think there was in them a tinge of fanaticism. His 
critique was based on the judgment, equally obvious and true, that it is 
demoralizing to worship an "immoral" Being. Now the Christian God, 
3eing omnipotent, was logically the "author of evil," and by permitting its 
continued existence, revealed a character which had to be judged by a 
different moral standard than prevails among the Christian community. 
This position apparently did not greatly affect John Stuart Mill's father 
in his social relations. It was expressed, if at all, philosophically rather 
than polemically, and not in any sort of "disagreeable" attitude to "be- 
lievers." And the sole "immoral" effect on him consisted in his dissem- 
bling his real convictions and in teaching his precocious son to do the 
same. But that son's detached and dispassionate attitude on the subject 
of religion, from his first youthful contact with the world, must reflect 
not only his constitutional moderation, but his father's calm and judicial 
attitude. 

When John Stuart Mill finished his autobiography he thought the 
time pretty well passed when society was capable of making people suffer 
for unusual religious views; that the day was at hand when one might 
dedicate himself to that duty which always theoretically existed, of affirm- 
ing one's real beliefs without fear, for the good of society. Instead of 
ruining one's influence, and possibly incurring a useless martyrdom, one 
might hope for "success" to attend even the efforts of individuals. 

Mill did not really conceal his religious views, he merely stated or 
implied them in ways adopted to allay prejudice, conciliate opinion and 
avoid bitter controversy. These views are stated quite frankly to many 
correspondents, and they are implied throughout his works, — as for ex- 
ample in his continual emphasis upon the principles of natural science, 
and his constantly expressed conviction that even the complex phenomena 
of social life may be and will be eventually reduced to laws, "as certain, 
if not as complete/' as in the recognized sciences. This emphasis on the 
conception of natural law is very characteristic, and amounts to a bias 
in favor of a scientific dogmatism, not entirely warranted by the situation 
but perfectly natural under the circumstances of Mill's day. He threw 
his weight on that side only to redress the balance and open the way to 
sane and judicious thinking. His manner was, not to balance himself 
skilfully between the horns of a dilemma, but rather to "take the bull by 
the horns" and observe the results. 

We may judge Mill's attitude the better perhaps for the very fact 
that he was attacked by people of extreme opinions both reactionary and 
radical. It is true that no radical dissatisfaction with his discriminating 
"examination" of philosophies and of policies, could hope to rival in 
fanaticism and venom the lucubrations of certain of the apologetic writ- 
ers. One of the most venerable of religious periodicals referring to him 
soon after his passage from the scene of his labors, added to its bitterly 
disparaging comments almost in so many (or few) words, "Better dead." 

83 



Mill's philosophic attitude was not a policy, but a necessary outcome 
of his whole methodological technique. This was dominated by the grand 
conception of the ultimate, however remote, reduction of social facts to 
a systematic, natural science, by the discovery and formulation of their 
laws, precisely on the anology of all other recognized natural sciences. 
These social facts were seen to depend for their intelligibility, and their 
capability of being analyzed, classified and scientifically treated, on a sci- 
ence of human nature, which he aspired for a time to formulate. His 
Ethology — or "science of custom," was to be a result of the study of the 
way man, man as distinctively human, tends to- "react," mentally and 
morally, to the stimulations of his environment, and particularly of his 
social millieu. The resemblance of this conception to our contemporary 
"behaviorist psychology" is noticeable — in so far as the latter deals with 
human behavior, studying on a biological basis its actual conditions, modi- 
fications and characteristics, without metaphysical presuppositions and 
with reference to intelligent control, and direction upon the environment. 

Neither did his position express a compromise ; much less was he an 
opportunist or temporizer in his philosophizing. This attitude may be 
studied in his associations, in his analysis of the "problem of freedom," 
in his reaction to Positivism and the Comtean spirit, and very markedly 
in his posthumous Three Essays on Religion. Mill kept progressing be- 
yond conventional, traditional, dogmatic and orthodox positions, but he 
did not cast away the good along with the evil, just because of its taint of 
authority. He would assimilate the good and build it into his thought, 
which kept drawing its more vital currents from the trunk of the old 
tree, — his father's tutoring, and Benthamism ; "association" and "utility" ; 
— but clothed itself with a foliage shaped and colored in the air and sun- 
light of a varied and varying world. 

In connection with his associations, the well-known incident of his 
standing for Parliament illustrates well the difference between his atti- 
tude and — either compromise or opportunism. As to the latter, the fact 
of his being immediately defeated for a second term shows how his philo- 
sophical mode of thought on public questions rendered the rank and file 
of partisan and prejudiced electors cold, and many of his colleagues in 
the House far from pleased and flattered. As to the matter of compro- 
mise, on the other hand, nothing could be more uncompromising than his 
stipulation in consenting to stand (or "run," as we say). He would not 
spend a shilling, nor do any electioneering. He did make a speech or two 
— to workmen chiefly ; and he won their hearts by frankly admitting to 
a heckler, that he had said, and held the opinion, that English workmen, 
while admiring truthfulness in others, were great liars themselves ! Their 
reception of this, with huge applause, proved the truth of the first propo- 
sition at least. If he was not exactly popular in the House, it was not 
that he was theoretical so much as that he was intractable ; he could not 

84 



be "regimented." He "elevated the tone of debate," but at some cost to 
the secret feelings of honorable members. 

Another illustration is offered in his consideration of "freedom." 
Here Mill brings all his logical equipment to safeguard man's genuine 
control over his destiny, against an obscure metaphysical dogma which 
takes away with one hand what it gives with the other, — which sacrifices 
"freedom" on the altar of theological controversy ; — and equally to defend 
it against the opposite "fate," surrender to an unwarrantable scientific 
dogmatism. This is done in a formal way in the Logic. But it is in his 
chapter on the same problem in the "Hamilton," that Mill's characteristic 
attitude, — that of a mediation suggested and controlled by a humanistic 
motive, — shows in striking contrast with his very uncompromising and 
decidedly hostile attitude to the "intuitionist" type of philosophy he is 
examining in Sir William Hamilton. For Mill no compromise was pos- 
sible with "intuition," which left experience precariously suspended in 
the void. 

When we review his connection with Comte and Positivism, his atti- 
tude comes out in striking detail. Here if anywhere, the logician will 
succumb to the fascination of system ; the empirical philosopher will pay 
homage to the father of a modern science of history; the discoverer of an 
inductive method of proof — supplemented withal by the "interposition of 
deductive steps," might well accept the authority of one who applied suc- 
cessfully a like method to the classification of the sciences. Mill con- 
fessed to Comte that he had to guard against the attractiveness of his doc- 
trines rather than against a too-critical attitude. Sufficient illustration of 
his discrimination of Comte's contributions to philosophic thought have 
been presented in a previous essay; but Mill's reaction to the Comtean 
thought will remain a classical example of his historical position as a 
mediator of philosophical ideas. The real fabric of that which he selected, 
assimilated and transmitted may be gathered from the concluding chap- 
ters of the Logic, those on the "Logic of the Moral Sciences," an analysis 
of which concludes the essay referred to. Mill's solution of the problem 
of "freedom" may be taken in relation with his position on Positivism. 
Ini the latter, he accepts the dynamic and rejects the static philosophy 
of society. In the former he vindicates a natural freedom, which will 
make progress possible, and necessary, while refusing to support any 
theory, either natural or supernatural, which would give the static con- 
ditions of human and social life ascendancy over the dynamic, — that 
would sacrifice progress to "order". He vindicated, in other words, a 
genuine freedom against a deterministic illusion. He interpreted free- 
dom as a phenomenon of natural law, without surrendering even its 
theoretical validity to a scientific dogmatism, on the one hand, any more 
than to a theological or metaphysical dogmatism, on the other. And of 
Positivism, he accepts the "philosophy" (method, and criticism) — in- 

85 



terpretation of the past (largely) and appraisal of the present, — but 
rejects the "polity" (program of reorganization). The two systematiza- 
tions seem to him fundamentally contradictory. 

In the matter of religion, Mill's spirit is humanistic and pragmat- 
ical. Not that he consciously employs the method of pragmatism as we 
understand it today ; nor is his logic like its logic, except in being founded 
on experience, and in being dominated by a human and social motive. 
It is significant that Professor James dedicated to Mill his volume of 
lectures on Pragmatism. In his formal critique of "natural religion," 
in the Three Essays which he withheld from publication till his death, 
Mill applies the methods of his own Logic, but he very carefully saves 
whatever "residues" logically escape disentegration, for the comfort 
and confirmation of those who desire to believe. And when one con- 
siders that these Essays do not assail even dogmatic theology in general, 
much less in any systematic way Christianity, one is amazed at the 
ferocious sarcasm with which certain reputed scholars assailed this post- 
humous work for its very dispassionate analysis of abstract theism. 
Systematic, traditional theology must have been in sad case, when it clung 
so desperately to "natural religion" to justify a supernatural faith. 

At all events, in these Essays all "dissembling", is absent. Whether 
the "time had came" when a man might speak frankly on the subject of 
religion, or not, Mill's best efforts to solve the most vexed of questions 
Was to be given to the world. But much else besides the Three Essays 
is needed to give us the picture of Mill's religious character. In his letters 
to Comte, and his general correspondence, we find many passages in 
which his self-expression on these matters is vivid and varied. In all 
his chief works his main theses, criticisms and solutions, are incorporated ; 
for the religious problem ramified in all directions, where the human 
and social problem extends, — where psychology and sociology are the 
leading inquiries. 

Beginning, then, at the end,— with the three Essays, — one notes 
first that in this systematic statement there is disclosed no material change 
of Mill's original views as indicated in the Autobiography. It is but a 
formal explanation and defence of the moral revolt which was his in- 
heritance from his father. The great point of it all is the same. If God 
made the world such as it is, then "natural" evil becomes moral evil; 
and if God be, as theology says, omnipotent, then he is "the author of 
evil" and "responsible" for it all. To love and to worship such a God 
would be degrading; to worship him as ideally good, and so forth, as 
theology also describes him, is morally stultifying. Even Mill's Mith- 
raism, or solution by means of a Persian dualism, is not different from 
the "Manichaeism" of earlier years. He mentions the struggle between 
Ormuzd and Ahriman as a type of the only possible theological account 
of the moral situation of the world, that does not do violence to the facts. 

86 



The main conclusion is a formulation, with precise qualifications, con- 
ditions and provisos, of that familiar to us in the Autobiography, — that 
one may without reproach "worship" a God of "limited power", who 
is "perfect" however in "goodness", though unable to realize fully his 
good will. Whether this conception is a possible, a consistent, or even a 
useful one, we shall not just now inquire. 

Mill does not criticize Christianity systematically in these Essays. 
They are a critique of "Natural Theology", and especially of theism, in 
its "natural basis". Of distinctively Christian doctrines, he gives a favor- 
able estimate (so far as they are discussed at all), and especially so to 
the central conception of Anglican theology, the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion. On page 253 he says of this, "It is the God incarnate, more than 
the God of the Jews, or of Nature, who has taken so great and salutary 
a hold on the modern mind." We may compare with this Mill's interest 
in the Oxford Movement, or Anglo-Catholic revival of the 1840*8. 

In 1842 he writes, explaining for the first time to Comte the move- 
ment as an exception to prevailing English "inattention" to French philos- 
ophizing. It is a "new school of theological philosophy" playing in the 
"sociological regeneration" of England a part analagous to that of the 
school of de Maistre in France. "Like that school, it judges the present 
crisis in a manner nearly true, being mistaken only about the remedies. 
It rehabilitates Catholicism and the Middle Ages, calls itself 'Catholic' 
and claims that the Anglican Church has always remained such, — with- 
out the Pope, it is true, but by transmitting the spiritual power in the 
body of bishops. It upholds the principle of authority against that of 
the unlimited liberty of conscience, — a principle more strongly accredited 
here than it could ever be made in France by the philosophy of Voltaire 
and Diderot; precisely because its less complete victory has not allowed 
it to reduce itself to absurdity by the full development of its anti-social 
consequences; this school also resembles the French Catholic school in 
that it was the first to found, in this country, a kind of historical philos- 
ophy." 

Mill mentions later to the same correspondent that the "Anglo- 
Catholic school, . . . which has assumed a considerable, though only 
transient, importance in our speculative public, has been fit to extend 
a high protection to my work. Their various organs have devoted articles 
to it — sometimes quite remarkable ; and I am told that at Oxford, where 
they are very powerful, everybody reads me. It is almost as though de 
Maistre recognized your great work! You may be sure they do this 
with many reservations, especially on the religious question, — but this 
is in every way better than if they praised me without stint. On the 
other hand, I am read at Cambridge in preparation for university exam- 
inations ; for Mr. Whewell questions students upon his own work, and as 
they think he will wish to frame questions implying doctrines that I have 
opposed, they read me in order to know what they are !" 

87 



In 1845 he refers once more to this movement in a letter to Comte. 
"We have secured, you and I, the honor of quite a distinguished publicity 
through the agency of one of the leaders of the Anglo-Catholic school, 
Mr. Ward, who brought out about a year or more ago, quite a large 
volume, in which he depicts in very dark colors the present state of the 
Anglican Church and English society, declares himself very sharply 
against the Reformation of Luther, and summons the Anglican Church 
to re-enter the fold of Roman Catholicism. This work made a great scan- 
dal here, and Oxford University has just deprived the author of his aca- 
demic degrees, as being no longer a member, at least by right, of the 
Angelican Church. It is only lately that I have read his work, although 
I have learned that there was a question of myself. I found myself cited 
in each chapter, and even oftener, with immense praise mingled with com- 
plaints of my unbelief and the atheistic tendencies of my writings. He 
also said he had read the greater part of your Cours on faith of what I 
said about it. It goes without saying that he rebukes you even more 
sharply than me for your irreligion ; yet he cites many passages, he eulo- 
gizes your ability and even your motives and says that you admit having 
taken many things from de Maistre, but that he considers you quite su- 
perior in depth to that thinker. According to him, we are bound to come 
to irreligion by ourselves, unless we come back to Catholic philosophy. 
For he extols the philosophy of Catholicism quite as much as the faith. 
It is quite amusing that we should find such decided support in this camp, 
and that Mr. Ward should be accused by his adversaries in the Quar- 
terly Review, of having drawn more doctrines from my school than from 
that of the Anglican theologians." 

Another noticeable feature of Mill's chapters on Theism is that he 
devoted practically the entire discussion of "Revelation" to the subject of 
miracles, and does not discuss the possibility, or the possible mode or na- 
ture of a revelation at all. There is no mention of Kant, or any other 
writer on this problem. 

The omissions we have noted of what we might be superficially led 
to expect in Mill's criticism of religion may be explained by the fact that 
his was by no means a negative attitude on the subject. His animadver- 
sions are directed solely against those elements which he regarded as 
demoralising. His object was not to undermine Christianity by a rigor- 
ous and systematic method of historical criticism, or to test all its for- 
mulas and beliefs by a standard of objective truth. In so far as Christian- 
ity's "metaphysics" was "bad," he would leave it to battle with and adjust 
itself to a better philosophy, to the creation of which he would devote his 
effort. Psychology, "ethology," sociology and ethics, as they assumed 
scientific form would alter and "improve" Christianity, as they would all 
the other institutions of mankind. The destruction of religion, then, or 
even of theology alone was very far from his desire or endeavor, 
cepting only in so far as they seemed to interfere with true morality. 

88 



To write of Mill's religious ideas implying that he had religious ideas 
may be unconventional. His not having such ideas, his taking an atti- 
tude of general negation to such ideas is a common assumption. But it 
is unwarranted by the facts. It is merely a fact that will be incidentally 
illustrated, and not a thesis to be supported by dialectic, or urged in a 
eugolistic sense, that Mill was a religious man. That is, if we accept a 
modern untechnical and unbiased definition of the terms religion and 
religious. 

Speaking of a modern definition of religion, we may assume a dis- 
tinction, not only between religion and theology, religion and faith (dog- 
matic), — between religion and its instruments, — between religion as a 
system of ends (ideals), and a system of means (institutions, formulas) ; 
but we may assume as abandoned by most enlightened and prejudiced 
thinkers the habit of giving to all forms of antagonism to anything asso- 
ciated with religion, the epithet of "irreligion," — much less (as was the 
manner of even the recent past, and is still the way of the thoughtless or 
lethargic), "infidelity," "atheism," — or even "scepticism" or "agnos- 
ticism." These all may be regarded as for us but polemical epithets, 
weapons forged in the fires of a strife which was itself the true and worst 
irreligion, used in the long warfare of theology with science, and un- 
suited as they always were to the context of reflective thought. 

It results that we may be anti-sacerdotal without being anti-prophetic ; 
we can be anti-ecclesiastical without being sectarian, anti-Catholic, or anti- 
Protestant without being anti-Christian or anti-catholic (with a small 
"c"), — anti-theological but not anti-religious. We may go so far as to say 
that one can be non-Christian (if actually possible to be destitute of even 
unconscious marks of such an inheritance — such a historical movement), 
even non-theistic without being, at least universally, censured as "irrelig- 
ious," or incurring any odium greater than the reproach, from certain offi- 
cial quarters, of "heresy," — whose supernatural or spiritual retribution, 
in the absence of penalties enforcable by "the secular arm," appear pro- 
gressively less fearful, and, in view of current knowledge in the sciences 
of nature, correspondingly difficult even to envisage or conceive. 

Fortunately, the fallacy and fanaticism on which persecution rested, 
are widely enough recognized, to make the majority of people rejoice in 
the immunity of the free-thinker; the fallacy being that of an enforced 
religion ; the fanaticism, a delusion that freedom of thought, on which de- 
pends investigation and the advance of knowledge, should be, or even 
could be, by the suffering and death of individuals, effectually repressed. 
The heretics are getting nearly indistinguishable from the martyrs; — 
philosophical insurgents, even, can hardly complain of their lot if they 
keep cool and keep kind, — in a word, remain "philosophical." 

Mill, in his Autobiography, twice makes a "profession" of religious 
experience : one, a youthful "conversion" ; the other, a mature and most 

89 



solemn self -consecration. That the latter was preceded by a period of 
idealizing, even idolatrous, worship is abundantly evident. Indeed, this 
worship is one of the two great weaknesses — the other being his "de- 
plorable" lack of conventional religiousness — Mill's friends saw in his 
character and life. The youthful conversion was to the philosophy of 
Bentham. "I now had in one among the best senses of the term, a re- 
ligion." The second profession and consecration he records thus : "Her 
memory is to me a religion, and her approbation a standard by which I 
endeavour to regulate my life." 

With these intimate glimpses may be related his conviction that it 
was a high duty to speak frankly to the world one's real opinions on this 
most vital problem, in as far as they would seem to do good in society, 
and not accomplish harm, and defeat their own ends, by destroying that 
which, though imperfect, was still of predominant worth, and for which 
a better thing had not been prepared to supersede it by a natural order 
of development and progress. 

In the preface of Draper's Conflict between Science and Religion, 
occurs the following passage: "When the old mythological religion of 
Europe broke down under the weight of its own inconsistencies, neither 
the Roman emperors nor the philosophers of those times did anything 
adequate for the guidance of public opinion. They left religious affairs 
to take their chance, and accordingly those affairs fell into the hands of 
ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics, parasites, eunuchs, and slaves." 
(1876. Preface, p. vii.) 

Just before making this statement, Dr. Draper urges the duty of 
emancipation to confess and profess itself before society and the world. 
"It then becomes the duty of those whose lives have been made familiar 
with both modes of thought", — i. e., those of stationary faith and of pro- 
gressive science, and their inevitable divergence, — "to present modestly, 
but firmly, their views; to compare the antagonistic pretensions calmly, 
impartially, philosophically. History shows that, if this be not done, so- 
cial misfortunes, disastrous and enduring, will ensue." 

In these passages are emphasized two points in reference to the 
philosophy of religion, or the "religious problem," namely, the moral obli- 
gation openly to profess unfaith, and the historical lesson of disaster — 
even catastrophe — attending its dissimulation. These considerations 
raise a question of the first importance, and interest to philosophers who 
do not scruple to confess genuinely scientific aims, and utilitarian, or in- 
strumental, motives. The question whether it is not the conspiracy of 
silence rather than the "new orientation" itself, that is responsible for 
the confusion and moral abandon which attend to a greater or less ex- 
tent the break-down of the system of religious sanctions. The point of 
view set forth by Draper seems admirably to express one's "total im- 
pression" of Mill's own. 



o»: 



The three Essays are essentially an examination of the logic and 
metaphysics of natural theology. It was bitterly attacked by the ortho- 
dox as the "Destruction of Theism", — an ironic phrase, of course. Agnos- 
tics on the other hand deplored the revelation of Mill's relapse into 
theism. Most interesting in this connection is the impression of Mill's 
book revived in Mr. Morley's recent Recollections. "In 1874," he writes, 
"Mill's posthumous essay on Theism appeared, — a piece that dismayed 
his disciples, not merely as an infelicitous compromise with orthodoxy, 
but what is far more formidable, as actually involving a fatal relaxation 
of his own rules and methods of reasoning. It made a sort of intellec- 
ual scandal, like the faith of Pascal, that most intrepid of reasoners, in 
the unspeakable miracle of the Holy Thorn. It seemed a duty to keep 
the agnostic lamps well-trimmed. I made no attempt to argue with the 
mystic or the transcendentalist, but only with the rationalist master of 
those who know, on rationalistic ground expressly chosen and profoundly 
impressed by himself." (Vol. I p. 106.) 

It is a sorrow to the author to lay hands on "Father Parmenides" — 
a teacher like Mill, endowed with a "powerful understanding", suffused 
with the "charmed equanimity" of "charis." None the less the 
essay is a "labored evasion of plain answers to plain questions." Mill's 
answer to his "man Friday" is shortly this : first, there is a low degree 
of probability that the world is the work of a Creator, not omnipotent, 
but of limited power, and he cannot "kill the devil". Secondly, if he 
exists, benevolence is one of his attributes but not his sole "prompter". 
Thirdly, there is room to hope he may grant us immortality, if that is any 
good to us. Lastly, the miracle of Christ's being "conferred on mankind" 
was "supernatural". "So, in short, the dogmatic assertion of creeds, 
faiths, and ardently professed convictions, that are taken to guide, il- 
luminate, and glorify the life of Christendom, is reduced from full shining 
noon to a dim twilight of bare possibilities and blenched peradventures". 
Mill's estimate of Christ is a "glowing, beautiful and sincere tribute." 

The passage here referred to by Mr. Morley, (pp. 253-5 m Three 
Essays) may be summarized as follows : The moral standard and ex- 
ample embodied in a "Divine Person" is the most valuable agent in 
Christianity, and an available and inalienable possession of all men. "Ra- 
tional criticism" leaves us "Christ". Presumably Mill does not mean the 
Messiah. If we substitute "Jesus" we shall get his idea better. Textual 
and historical criticism, too, "leave" a unique prophetic figure, and a body 
of "sayings" whose force and obvious originality are in marked contrast 
with the Greek-Oriental theosophy credited to Jesus in the Fourth Gos- 
pel. Mill recognizes that the "life and sayings of Jesus" — here using the 
given name — bear a "stamp of personal originality combined with a pro- 
fundity of insight", which proclaim him a genius of the first rank. He 
did not aim at "scientific precision", and we may recognize superlative 

91 



genius without supposing any supernatural "inspiration." Add to this 
"genius" the character of "greatest moral reformer and martyr," and 
religion is justified in making him "the ideal representative and guide of 
humanity." Even the "unbeliever" will best translate the "rule of virtue" 
into the "concrete" by trying to live so as "Christ would approve." One 
may ask how true this would be to-day when criticism has not confined 
itself to the "text," but proceeded to the philosophy of the Nazarene. 
Mill thinks even the "rational sceptic" may conceive that Jesus' practical 
Messianic consciousness was not a delusion ; that he was "possibly" what 
he deemed himself, "a man charged with a special, express, and unique 
commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue." "We may 
well conclude," he adds, "that the influences of religion on the character 
which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the 
evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and that what they lack 
in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief, is more than 
compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanc- 
tion." As to the first part of this statement, it is obvious that its signifi- 
cance will depend on how far criticism goes, and what does "remain." 
As to the latter portion, it is somewhat ambigious. It is a fair question 
whether Utilitarian ethical ideals are sufficiently in harmony with Chris- 
tian—even as revised by the founder of Christianity — to warrant Mill's 
generous tribute to the "recitude of the morality they sanction." 

Mr. Morley thinks Mill's argument on theism is weakened by over- 
sight of one of the "remarkable new growths, — the science (sic?) of 
comparative religion." At least, he "dissociated his speculation on theism 
from methods of ordered historic thought and knowledge, with which it 
was especially connected." He had forgotten how recently the "sublimest 
sayings of the Gospels found exact parallels in the Talmud." Referring 
to the miracle of "Christ's" bestowal on mankind, Mr. Morley asks what 
"becomes of social evolution" if one of the "most important of all the 
changes in moral history" was due to supernatural and unique interven- 
tion. Why not make similar claims for the heroes and yeomen who 
"wrought transformations," and labored in the "stupendous phalanx" of 
churchmen? Mill dogmatically asserts that "the Manichaean doctrine 
alone escapes "imputing moral obliquity to the Supreme Being" by denying 
omnipotence. The world is a battlefield between two Powers. 'Tis an 
"Olympian dualism" of beneficent and maleficent divinities. "Our con- 
sternation in those days arose from the path along which Mill travelled 
to this particular form of theistic conclusion. He who had done more 
than anybody (else) to make language, conceptions, reasoned arguments, 
into instruments of precision was now for flatly sanctioning one of the 
hardest of mystic propositions." Consolation in bereavement was to 
Mill the "only permanent value" in religion. "But can we really suppose," 
asks Mr. Morley, "that this scheme of possible contingencies, low degree 

92 



of probability, permissive hopes, dubious potentialities, could bring com- 
fort or consolation worth the name." Mr. Morley's striking summary 
is, that Mill cuts the tangle of life and death, only to offer a "second knot" 
yet harder to unloose. 

Can we explain these anomalies ? Mill was not willing that scientific 
methods should destroy what was — though imperfect — humanly and so- 
cially valuable. The fault of Christianity was "bad metaphysics"; a 
judgment not conflicting with recognition of the "rectitude" of Christian 
morality, — the practical results of real Christianity. The Three Essays 
were a criticism of the "metaphysics" (in the logical-psychological sense 
of his day) of abstract theism or "natural religion"; touching upon the 
Incarnation of the historic Christ, only to praise. 

The thesis of the Three Essays on Religion is, briefly, this: God 
cannot be both omnipotent and all-good. There is practically no evidence 
of his existence except a very little in the design argument. There is 
some indication of goodness, and at the same time much evidence of lim- 
ited power. Hence God may be believed in naturally as a good, but not 
all-powerful, Being. Mill's procedure is, first to examine the grounds of 
natural religion in the conception of Nature. Here the method is a re- 
duetto ad absurdum. "Follow nature" is the ethical maxim of natural 
religion, for by so doing you will obey Nature's God. Now "Nature," 
either includes or excludes man. If the former is meant, the maxim is 
meaningless; whatever you do will be natural. If the latter sense be em- 
ployed, the maxim is self-contradictory; for then man's whole effort is 
to oppose, modify, control, use, and even defeat, Nature. Finally, should 
either of these conceptions be made the ground of a Divinity, this being 
could not be an object of religious reverence. 

The second essay, on the "Utility," or the happiness-value of "Re- 
ligion," is a criticism of natural Theism designed to discover any possible 
salvage of such beliefs, on the principle of utility. The test is not that of 
doctrinal Utilitarianism, but seems to be that of a common-sense, intelli- 
gent conception of a real and not theoretic human happiness. The method, 
of course, is the method of "residence." 

In the third essay, on Theism, Mill reviews the main apologetic ar- 
guments, so far as abstract and based on natural theology, and comes 
to the reiterated conclusion that the argument from design has some slight 
evidential value, but that all forms of the other "proofs" are practically 
eliminated. The method here is to expose the dilemma. In each dif- 
ferent point of view natural theology is found to be bound up with the 
fundamental problem created by the demand for reconciliation of power 
and goodness in the conception of God. 

In the "Nature" the thesis, as has been intimated above, is developed 
from the ambiguity of the term. There are really two concepts as com- 
mon usage shows, — one including, one excluding, man. But in neither 

93 



sense can "Nature" prescribe a rule of life for man. "Naturam sequi" 
is absurd and self -contradictory. Man is either wholly controlled by Na- 
ture, — a part of its machinery ; or Nature is the domain of his conquests. 
This reasoning undermines the foundation of a theology based on Nature, 
which is either identical with God, or reflects his "character"; and that 
makes "him" either unmoral or immoral. 

To restate the argument of the utility, — after examining impartially 
the parts of natural theology with a view to ascertaining what (if any) 
doctrines may be justified on the ground of utility, Mill applies his own 
inductive method of residues, and lays down the thesis that nothing 
should be left to be accomplished for the practical life by the agency of 
"religion," so dubiously based, except whatever (if anything) cannot be 
done by other means. The "residue" is found to be very meagre. As 
for the final essay, in it Mill concludes that a good God, of "limited 
power" may exist, and he may "will the good" of mankind, but cannot 
be supposed to act with no other motives. 

Mill regrets that Plato did not leave a dialogue Peri Phuseos, 
as a specimen of the "Socratie Elenchus", which would have pre- 
vented his successors from modes of thought due fundamentally to a 
"fallacious use" of the word Nature. In the absence of a Platonic 
model, however, Mill employs the Platonic method. The first "rule" 
is to fix the meaning of your term, and this is to be sought (second 
rule) in the concrete. The "nature" of a thing is thus found to mean 
"its entire capacity of exhibiting phenomena". This is consistent 
with Mill's well-known definition of an object as "the permanent 
possibility of sensation". "Nature in the abstract" then is the "ag- 
gregate of the powers and properties of all things". And we must 
note that this includes not only "phenomena", but also their "causes", 
as well as all possible phenomena, — all the "unused capabilities of 
causes". It is the mode of existence of things as a whole which the 
general term suggests, rather than the endless details; "the concep- 
tion which might be formed of their manner of existence as a mental 
whole, by a mind possessing a complete knowledge of them". The 
"arts" of man are natural, as is all his activity, and this consists 
chiefly in "moving things into certain places". But all man's powers 
of will, intelligence and strength, are themselves natural. 

A second meaning thus emerges, — "Nature" in a sense excluding 
man's agency in events, or even as opposed to it. These two senses 
elucidate most others which have "consequences". In which of them 
does it carry its moral meaning? 

Naturam sequi has been the ethical motto of many ancient 
schools. Stoics and Epicureans agreed upon it, and both bequeathed 
it to the Roman jurists, and they as jus naturale, to the political 
writers and moralists of Europe. International morality based on 

94 



this conception passed it on to Christianity. Here a rival doctrine 
of natural depravity opposed it and so it was the more strongly em- 
phasized by the Deists. Mill adds that Christianity had assimilated 
considerable "sentimental Deism" through the spread of Rousseau's 
influence. He attributes to his own age a general moral confusion, 
uncertainty, and opportunism. But people still speak eulogistically 
of things done "according to nature" or of nature as "enjoining" them ; 
and the word unnatural is still "vituperative". All of which implies 
the same fundamental theorem as that of the formal works on "natural 
law". 

Is then the moral meaning a third definition of Nature? No, 
because people believe "nature", in the sense of what exists, is act- 
ually a criterion, of what ought to be. The examination of this con- 
ception shows that it is due to the ambiguity of the word "law". 
Law, means both what is and what ought to be; so does nature. An 
ethical sense of law is reflected in an ethical sense of nature, — in- 
evitably, from the close association of the two terms in the phrase 
law of nature. The same difficulty exists with this latter phrase in 
its scientific use, where the word law gives to the conception of cause 
a sense of mysterious compulsion or of power, which Mill, following 
Hume, strenuously denies. The meanings, then, being limited to 
two, to which sense of nature is the moral implication attached? 
Now at first sight it seems plain that it cannot be with the all- 
inclusive sense. But Mill points out that a rational effort may be 
based on following nature even in this sense. "Though all conduct 
is in conformity to laws of nature all conduct is not grounded on 
knowledge of them, and intelligently directed to the attainment of 
purposes by means of them." "According to Bacon's maxim we can 
obey nature in such a manner as to command it." "If, therefore, the 
useless precept to follow nature were changed into a precept to study 
nature, to know and take heed of the properties of things which we 
have to deal with, so far as these properties are capable of forwarding 
or obstructing any given purpose, we should have arrived at the first 
principle of all intelligent action, or rather at the definition of in- 
telligent action itself." This would be then "Naturam observare." 

But this maxim is merely prudential; the other is ethical, and 
supposed worthy to be enforced by sanctions and penalties. "Right 
action must mean something more and other than merely intelligent 
action." Can we establish such rectitude on nature in a sense elim- 
inating human agency? The contradiction is obvious. This nature 
is to be controlled by man. That is what the limitation of its "ex- 
tension" means. Of course, if the spontaneous natural process is 
right, we may not fly, nor even elevate an impious umbrella! But 
classical moralists do not dispraise the arts of man. Yet "all praise 

95 



of civilization, or art, or commerce, is so much dispraise of nature; 
an admission of imperfection which it is man's business and merit 
to be always endeavoring to correct or mitigate." Not a little effort 
and sagacity has been spent by mankind in justifying by the fiction 
of a divine gift, or bringing under the sanction of revelation the de- 
veloping arts of life, and defending inventions from "religious sus- 
picion" as interfering with the divine government of the world. 
Mill conceives that although now one would rarely recommend any 
course of action on account of its agreement with the idea of a divine 
economy, one feels the force of such a support for that which he already 
approves. The maxim is seldom contradicted. One avoids the sus- 
picion of impiety. Each party to a controversy likes to claim the 
support of religious arguments, and to offset one alleged impiety by 
another and better kind of piety than the opponents'. Progress 
"clears away particular errors, while the causes of errors remain stand- 
ing," and but "little weakened". Religious persons should "face the 
undeniable fact", that nature "unmodified by man" is something no 
just and beneficent creator would ask "rational creatures" to imitate. 

Mill distinguishes the impression of awe, really produced by the 
mere vastness of the greater natural phenomena, from the moral 
emotion of reverent admiration of excellence. "Those in whom awe 
produces admiration may be aethetically developed, but they are 
morally uncultivated." Evil power may cause similar emotions. Mill 
then arraigns nature with a rare and vehement eloquence for its "per- 
fect and absolute recklessness". The passage (of three pages) is one 
long pathetic fallacy, but throws the onus probandi on those who 
would invest nature with the moral character of a divine order. 
Nature is in fact a contradiction of order, and disorder a counterpart 
of her work, if we judge from a moral standpoint. "Anarchy and 
the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin and death, by 
a hurricane and a pestilence." 

Even if these "deeds" of nature are for good, though mysterious 
ends, that would not make our imitation of them good. Reductio 
ad absurdum. If it is a sufficient reason for doing one thing, that 
Nature does it, why not another thing? If not all things, why any- 
thing? But, of course, no one consistently believes in this occult 
good hidden by the noxious facts of nature. 

Mill observes that good coming out of evil, on which people love 
to dilate, is as "often true of human crimes, as of natural calamaties". 
The London fire would have improved its health just the same if it 
had really been the work of the "furor papisticus" so long "com- 
memorated on the Monument" ! Again, evil often comes out of good, 
— that is, of what to all present appearance was beneficial. Such 

96 



events are as much talked about, but not so willingly generalized; 
they are dismissed with pious reflections on human limitations. 
"Both good and evil naturally tend to fructify", however, "each in 
its own kind". "The general tendency of evil is toward further evil." 
"Poverty is the parent of a thousand mental and moral evils." In- 
jury and oppression are degrading. The natural theologians are 
severely reproached for losing their way utterly, devoting all the 
"resources of sophistry" to show that misery exists lest there should 
be more and worse misery, and that the universe is a just, even if 
unhappy one. Apart from ethical considerations, the dilemma re- 
mains; nature is no more a proper environment for justice than for 
virtue. Given natural justice and a God omnipotent, each would 
experience evil in proportion to his evil deeds and the good would 
experience only happiness. The doctrine of "another life" proclaims 
that the injustice of the present order is felt by the very persons 
who hold the sacred view of nature. The most fanatical theology 
cannot reconcile nature with omnipotent benevolence. 

Now to a God, good but not almighty, a man could be a "not 
ineffectual auxiliary". And such, thinks Mill, has been consciously 
or unconsciously, the fate of all who have derived real and "worthy" 
aid from a belief in Divine Providence. "It may be possible to 
believe with Plato that perfect goodness, limited and thwarted in 
every direction by the intractableness of the material, has done this 
because it could do no better? But that with full control he made 
the material what it is, is an idea repugnant to the most elementary 
moral distinctions. Still, men cling to the notion that some part 
of nature is the divine pattern, though that part is not made clear 
in any "accredited doctrine". If it be the "active impulses" of senti- 
ent life, all must be considered good in their operation. If only a 
section of this activity be meant, it must be that where "the Creator's 
hand" is manifested. Now man's deliberate conduct seems most 
his own, and hence the "inconsiderate" is attributed to God, — which 
is to exalt instinct above reason. Then "all unreflecting impulses 
are invested with authority over reason, except the only ones which 
are most probably right." Of course, these consequences will not 
be carried through. "The pretension is not to drive Reason from 
the helm, but rather to bind her by articles to steer only in a par- 
ticular way." She is to defer to instinct. 

Mill thinks the idea that "goodness is natural" is highly artificial. 
"Worth of character was deemed the result of a sort of taming" 
Moral excellence is "repugnant to the untutored feelings of hu- 
manity". Courage, the barbaric virtue, has had to subdue the most 
powerful human emotion, fear; and this shows the might of disci- 

97 



pline. But courage is probably not natural, "consistent courage is 
always the effect of cultivation". Again, — cleanliness is as artificial 
as possible. Children, and the "lower classes" seem fond of dirt. And 
it is disgusting only to those who become accustomed to do with- 
out it. 

If we turn to the social virtues, "it is the verdict of all ex- 
perience that selfishness is natural". And there is a "sympathetic" 
as well as a "solitary" kind — l'egoisme a deux, a trois, ou a quatre. 
Whether an uninstructed person was ever more kind than selfish, 
or not, such cases are extremely rare and do not disprove the point. 
But says Mill, "savages are always liars". They have no notion of 
truth as "a point of honor". So of the "whole East and the greater 
part of Europe". Justice is equally artificial; the farther we look 
back the more do we find justice defined by law. Just rights were 
legal rights; a just njan, one who observed others' legal rights. A 
"higher justice" is an extension of this idea of legal justice. Ety- 
mology as well as current usage bears out this view. Mill is "ready", 
with proper reservation, (against "intuition", doubtless) to recog- 
nize "germs" of virtue in human nature, but they would stand no 
chance against noxious growths unless artificially cultivated. The 
human nature thus perfected is the only nature "commendable to 
follow", and even it implies some more ultimate, chosen standard. 
So even man's own nature is to be amended rather than followed. 
Mill points out the absurdity of those who admit the necessary 
primacy of "reason", and yet recognize in the urgency of the desires 
the designs of "Providence", and in the love of existence the proof 
of a "future life". But he, while admitting the raison d'etre of all 
impulses, believes they must not only be regulated, but some even, — 
as "destructiveness", or the "instinct of domination"; — "starved by 
disuse". Mill lays the utmost emphasis! on the idea that the untrained 
impulses of men would all lead to misery; and judges that "one- 
tenth" the "pains" taken to illustrate from nature the theory of bene- 
ficent design, would reveal the animal world divided into devourers 
and devoured, and without protection from innumerable ills. 

Besides the many ethical uses of the idea of conformity to nature, 
Mill cites many lax eulogositic uses of "natural" applied to human 
behavior. One has natural grace, or we recognize his natural man- 
ner or character, or he was naturally so-and-so until something made 
him otherwise; one is naturally dull but persevering; naturally am- 
bitious but unfortunate ; or finally, anyone acts or reacts "naturally" 
when he does merely what any man would ordinarily do. Now in 
these cases there is no necessarily good sense at all, — often quite the 
contrary. And Mill singles out "absense of affectation" as the one 

98 



sense of "naturalness" that is really a term of praise. But in this 
absence he recognizes the great virtue of "sincerity. " 

The discussion draws to an end with this ethical dictum : "Con- 
formity to nature has no connection whatever with right and wrong." 
The idea should have no place in ethical discussion, except as a second- 
ary factor in the question of the degree of blame. Facile est descensus 
Averni, and virtue is more unnatural than vice ; but if we feel a wrong 
to be unnatural, that adds something to culpability. If however no 
such repugnance exists, no question of naturalness can effect praise 
or blame. "The corresponding plea in extenuation of a culpable act 
because it was natural, never ought to be admitted." Most bad ac- 
tions are "natural" enough, as is also the "fellow feeling" that makes 
us often plead their "naturalness," especially when we are aware 
of our capability of doing the like. On the other hand, an action 
offensive to one's taste may be more abhorrent than a crime. 

This essay ends with a brief summary, which we may condense 
thus: "Nature" means either the "entire system of things", or that 
system less man's "intervention". The ethical precept, Naturam 
sequi, is for the first sense meaningless ; all is natural. In the other 
sense, this motto is either irrational or immoral. Irrational because 
human activity consists essentially in intervening in the "spontan- 
eous course of nature"; immoral, because natural phenomena when 
given moral meaning are largely evil and not to be imitated. "The 
scheme of nature regarded in its whole extent cannot have had, for its 
sole or even principal object, the good of human or other sentient 
beings." They all must win good from it. Any signs of benevolent 
purpose are accompanied by signs of limited power, and the duty im- 
plied for men is to cooperate with and supplement the efforts of the 
beneficent powers, in order to control nature in the interests of high 
ideals. 

The question of the usefulness of religion is rarely raised because, 
as Mill remarks, this question never occurs to a positive religious at- 
titude. It is weakening apologetics that raises this question. An 
argument from utility proposes hypocrisy to unbelievers, self-decep- 
tion to half-believers, dissimulation of doubt to all. But arguments, 
when beliefs are weak, assume a more important place, and may be enter- 
tained by those whose wish to believe is disinterested. Utility preserves 
the remnants of training and religious habits, even emphasizing them ex- 
ternally. If religion be necessary, it is unfortunate that it should rest 
on "moral bribery or subornation of the understanding", — unfortu- 
nate for sincere believers, as well as for sincere disbelievers, who can- 
not be frank for fear of doing harm. The mental conflict is disastrous. 
It breeds indifference to the highest ends, fear that free thought will 

99 



destroy virtue, or banish noble feelings and impulses. People turn 
from philosophy, or are zealots for " intuitive" schools, where feeling 
supplies evidence of truth. "The whole of the prevalent metaphysics 
of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favor of 
religion." Is this speculative effort of use to "human well-being"? 
Would not a recognition of our mental limitations be more valuable, 
as the devotion of our powers to "other sources of virtue and happiness", 
which need no supernatural support, would be more useful? 

Mill had no animus, except against the hateful "intuitionism" 
which vitiated religious philosophy. He thinks "sceptical philoso- 
phers" quite as wrong, in supposing that the problem can be solved by 
a simple formula, and himself holds a characteristic mediating posi- 
tion. It is not sufficient to say truth and utility cannot conflict, and 
if religion be not "true" it cannot be useful; that its rejection then 
can only result in good. For, Mill points out the acquisition of a neg- 
ative truth cannot be as clearly useful as the discovery of a positive 
truth, an agnostic conclusion does not give us a fact to guide us. The 
supposed "fact" in which we no longer trust, may have pointed in 
the right direction, and its prominence may have served us when bet- 
ter "indications" were more obscure. "It is in short perfectly con- 
ceivable that religion may be merely useful without being intellectual- 
ly sustainable." And there is historical evidence of this which even 
an "unbeliever" cannot deny. Whereupon, Mill announces his object 
of inquiry, "whether it is the case generally, and with reference to 
the future." Between the familiar arguments pro and con Mill notes 
the distinction that the affirmative side have gone very fully into the 
"advantages" of religion in general and particular; but the negative 
have merely emphasized the most damaging evidence. Now, nothing 
is easier than to catalog the crimes committed in the name of religion, 
— "from the sacrifice of Iphegenia to the Dragonnades of Louis XIV 
(not to descend lower)", — but these crimes are those of particular re- 
ligions, and "afford no argument against the usefulness" of any other. 
Indeed the inherent evils which produced these "odious" things were 
found to be separable, and have mostly been removed from the re- 
ligions of mankind. They remain, however, reproaches and hurt the 
good influence of religion, revealing its shortcomings in contrast with 
its claims, and showing that all moral advance is not due to it, and 
occurs in spite of it. Improvement is proceeding, and not yet complete. 
We are to suppose religion to accept the best ethical elements from 
every source, and then when it becomes free from the odium of bad 
doctrine, it is time to find whether its usefulness is inherent, or its 
benefits otherwise obtained. "The essential portion of the inquiry 
into the temporal usefulness of religion, is the subject of the present 

100 



essay. It is a part that has been little treated of by sceptical writers." 
Mill adds that the only available matter for the sceptical argument is 
found in "Philip Beauchamp" and in Comte's writings, — and he will 
make free use of this. 

Two questions divide the essay. What does religion do — for the 
individual, and — for society ? And first an important distinction, "com- 
monly overlooked", is emphasized. The advantage religion gains by 
being credited with all moral training whatever, and wherever re- 
ceived. All moral culture resulting from education and social in- 
fluences, as it usually claims religious sanction, so religion usually 
gets the credit for it. The "great moral power in human affairs", 
that of generally received beliefs and customs instilled from child- 
hood, being thus commanded by religion, magnifies its achievements 
and increases its authority. The influence of authority is paramount 
for the individual, who respects general social assent more than his 
own intelligence. Even one other makes an "infinite" gain to a be- 
lief, as Novalis said; but when everyone you know holds the same, 
authority is overwhelming. The number of "dissentients" measures 
the influence of a doctrine, on belief and on conduct. A thing which 
has proved true whether it had religious sanction or not. 

Religion adds to the influence of its association with generally 
received beliefs, the power derived from a like connection with edu- 
cation. Yet it is not the religious reference that gives early educa- 
tion its "empire". The law of God is but the parental command. 
Another system of duties without religious association, would be as 
strongly rooted, if taught as early. And social agreement on such a 
system would spread moral culture where now it is excluded by re- 
ligious prejudices and antagonisms. The greatest strength in educa- 
tion lies in the command over the feelings that early acquired beliefs 
have, unequalled by any later ones. Mill declares the "power of edu- 
cation is almost boundless". He sees in the long life of the laws of 
Lycurgus, and in the strength of Spartan institutions, the influence, 
not of religion but of education. "Among the Greeks generally, 
social morality was extremely independent of religion." And "such 
moral teaching as existed in Greece had very little to do with religion." 
The latter was to preserve the dignity of the gods themselves, not to 
prescribe the duty of men. "The case of Greece is, I believe, the only 
one in which any teaching other than religious, has had the un- 
speakable advantage of forming the basis of education." The ex- 
ception proves the rule, that "early religious teaching has owed its 
power over mankind rather to its being early than to its being re- 
ligious." 

A third power held as religion's "appanage" is public opinion. 

101 



Morality may be summarized as the conduct one desires others to 
observe towards himself. ! Public opinion often supplies motives 
more powerful than conscience, but when they are in harmony, as 
they are naturally, the resulting motives will be all-powerful. The 
strongest passions, except mere animal appetites, are names for 
motives derived from public opinion. Glory, praise, vanity, honor, 
love of sympathy, dread of shame, of social penalties, of resulting 
failure and loss. Ambition, depending on the favor of men — except 
in war time. Ambition, whose very objects are such because com- 
monly desired. One's very merits are recognized in the opinion of 
others. Beyond the gaining of subsistence, the varied activities of 
civilization are largely directed to securing "the favorable regard of 
mankind", while crimes are committed to escape or to avoid the 
consequences of its disfavor. Religion, by alliance with this power, 
derives from it a strength which appears its own. But the failure 
of divine penalties to fulfill prophecy, dispels the illusion, while the 
promise of remote rewards and punishments influences conduct but 
little. Religion encourages the belief that it is never too late to 
mend, though preachers complain of the small effect on conduct of 
the "tremendous penalties denounced". Mill cites Bentham's proofs 
of the ineffectiveness of the religious sanction, unenforced by public 
opinion. Bentham's illustrations are those of oaths, — court, university 
and custom house, — duelling, and sex irregularities, — in which popular 
sentiment makes one law for the man and another for the woman. 
The first case merely illustrates the tendency of the two motives to 
appear or disappear together. But the other two show the weakness 
of the religious motive alone; for "what mankind think venial, it is 
hardly ever supposed that God looks on in a serious light: at least, 
by those who feel in themselves any inclination to practise it". With 
regard to Christian martyrs Mill is unwilling to attribute their hero- 
ism to the influence of human opinion, but as little can it be assigned 
to supernatural rewards. "Their impulse was a divine enthusiasm — 
a self-forgetting devotion to an ideal." "Every great cause" may 
"inspire" the like "exalted feeling". 

But the use of religion as a "supplement to human laws" is 
only the "vulgarest" part of this branch of the subject. Its nobler 
exponents claim religion to be a social necessity, as aloiie able to 
"teach us what morality is". They attribute to religion all high mor- 
ality, assert the superiority of Christian morality to that of "un- 
inspired philosophers", — who even were indebted to a Hebrew or 
primitive tradition, — that only a divine moral law will heceive human 
sanction, and, however powerful that sanction might be in securing 
obedience, the law itself would not exist but for religion. There is, 

102 



historically, truth in these claims but the ancients attributed physical 
phenomena also to spiritual powers, and had no conception of natural 
laws. A universal deference to spiritual powers was thus inevitable. 
Neither moral nor scientific truths could for them be other than 
supernatural; but would they now give up moral, any more than 
scientific truths, because these had "no higher origin than wise and 
noble human hearts"? Once possessed, are not these truths self- 
justifying? True, in Jesus some forms of goodness are carried to an 
unprecedented "height", though not without parallels in the Stoic 
emperor. "But this benefit, whatever it amounts to, has been gained." 
Here Mill is a humanist. "Mankind have entered into the possession 
of it. It has become the property of humanity, and cannot now be 
lost by anything short of a return to primaeval barbarism." The 
"commandment" of love, the greatness of ministry, chivalry and the 
high claim of the weak and lowly upon both God and man, the good 
Samaritan, the "Neither do I condemn thee", the Golden Rule, and 
other "noble moralities" not free from obscurity: Mill regards these 
as permanent elements of civilization, and far enough in advance of 
ordinary practice to remain a standard, inalienable from human culture. 
On the other hand, "wherever morality is supposed to be of super- 
natural origin, morality is stereotyped ; as law is, for the same reason, 
among believers in the Koran." 

Belief in the supernatural is no longer required, Mill concludes, 
to teach us social morality, and furnish effectual motives to social 
virtue and against its opposite. The more "elevated branch of the 
subject" remains, the inquiry as to the necessity of supernatural 
beliefs for the individual. For if they are necessary to the individ- 
ual, they are to society in a far higher than the vulgar sense. What 
wants, then, of human nature are thus supplied? And how far can 
these be otherwise fulfilled ? We now apply the "method of residues". 
Mill conceives that something more honorable than fear "first made 
gods in the world". Animism was, in our present terms, this origin. 
Fear came with the disembodiment of the fetich, — the withdrawal 
of the spiritual power from familiar objects to the greater objects 
of nature, or to a vague and mysterious invisibility. Belief then pre- 
ceded fear, but fear when coirie, reinforced belief. The persistence 
of religion in cultivated minds is due to man's limited knowledge and 
boundless inquiry. "Human existence is girt round with mystery." 
Its "domain" is an "island" in space, a moment in time. "What cause 
or agency made it what it is, and on what powers depends its future 
fate?" No answer is forthcoming, and imagination supplies all we 
have. Religion and poetry thus respond to the same human want, 
and the former is different only as a "craving" to know whether there 

103 



are realities corresponding to the imaginings of poetry. Thus a "be- 
lief and expectation" are added to the poetry and the unimaginative 
may share this with the poetical. The "canvas" of belief is filled with 
"such ideal pictures as it can either invent or copy". The "insuffici- 
ency" of human life is satisfied, sufferings are consoled, — by the "hope 
of heaven" for the selfish, the "love of God" for the "tender and 
grateful". 

We have now to ask whether these satisfactions and elevations 
cannot be afforded by the "idealization of our earthly life" ; whether 
this may not yield a poetry and even a worthy religion, still better 
able, when aided by education, to "ennoble conduct". If it be ob- 
jected that the transiency of human life is not an adequate founda- 
tion, — no better than "Epicureanism", — Mill, while commending the 
maxims of that cult, and admitting that the "Carpe diem" is a "rational 
corollary from the shortness of life", thinks men may nevertheless 
care for something "beyond it", and even feel the "deepest interest 
in things they will never live to see". Is not the life of the race 
practically endless? And, in view of its indefinite perfectibility, life 
"offers to the imagination and sympathies a large enough object to 
satisfy any reasonable demand for grandeur of aspiration". Herein 
Mill lays down the principle of the Religion of Humanity. He thinks 
that the "more eminent in thought and mind" are not the only ones" 
capable of identifying their feelings with the entire life of the human 
race". The degree of cultivation necessary "might be, and certainly 
will be, if human improvement continues, the lot of all". Rome was 
the governing religious idea to the Romans, and (although Mill 
thinks them otherwise much over-praised) where "that idea is con- 
cerned" a "certain greatness of soul manifests itself in all their 
history". He cites the evidence of Cicero De Officiis, though, apart 
from patriotism, not much commending his ethics. But why should 
we not be trained to "feel the same absolute obligation toward the 
universal good", as a Roman did to make a patriotic sacrifice? Sym- 
pathy and benevolence should suffice in some, supplemented by the 
"force of shame", in others. Such disinterested morality would ask 
no greater or more material reward than the approval of those, living 
or dead, whom we venerate. That such motivation would suffice to 
generate the highest moral earnestness, intelligence, and aspiration, is 
shown by the immense influence of the great and good men of history. 
Here Mill announces his thesis, — that "to call these sentiments by 
the name morality, exclusively of any other title, is claiming too little 
for them. They are a real religion." And in close connection he gives 
a striking definition. "The essence of religion is the strong and 
earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, 

104 



recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount 
over all selfish objects of desire." The last condition "is fulfilled by 
the Religion of Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a 
sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifesta- 
tions, and far more so than in any of their others." Mill then asserts 
roundly that this religion is "better than any form whatever of 
supernaturalism", and a "better religion than any of those which are 
ordinarily called by that title". But the statement is defended: the 
Religion of Humanity is disinterested, whereas supernatural religion 
announced good and evil of "such magnitude" as to absorb all interest 
away from any other less remote ideal. Not but that many devotees 
are disinterested, but common minds seize only the appeal to selfish 
interest. Even the "Christ of the Gospels" speaks of rewards and 
punishments. But the cultivation of unselfishness is the best thing 
that any religion can do, and this is exactly what the religion of hu- 
manity would do, — by habitually expressing such feelings. Then the 
old religions depend for effect upon a deadening, or worse, of mental 
activities. Mill means that the worship of an (as it were) unsuccess- 
ful creator, requires a sophistication which is demoralizing. He 
points out that when one makes excuses for the "mysterious" ways 
of Providence, he is no longer adoring moral perfection; he is wor- 
shipping power. 

In contrast with his earlier tribute to tthe historic Christ, Mill finds 
in connection with demoralizing theological doctrines, that "revelation" 
itself, the gospel and the authentic teaching of Jesus, contain elements 
potent for moral corruption which almost outweigh the moral beauty and 
worth. The doctrine of hell epitomizes these elements. Every other 
outrage of justice and humanity involved in the average Christian idea 
of God, is insignificant "beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness." 
The worst of it is that these other ideas are not so "deducible from the 
very words of Christ," — such doctrines as atonement and redemption, 
original sin, and vicarious punishment ; and that making belief in Christ's 
divine mission a condition of salvation. The responsibility of Jesus for 
these is less clear than for the doctrine of hell. There are also elements 
distinguishable as Paulism, and possibly separable from Christianity; 
for example the reactionary doctrine of the divine right of rulers, and 
its corollaries. But there is one "moral contradiction inseparable from 
any form of Christianity"; that the "one thing needful" was withheld 
from the many, and that the news of this exclusive gift came so ill- 
authenticated as to leave a "tendency to disbelieve," which the growth of 
human knowledge must inevitably increase. "He who can believe these 
to be the intentional shortcomings of a perfectly good Being, must im- 
pose silence upon every prompting of the sense of goodness and justice 
as received among men." The pure and ingenuous faith widely exempli- 

105 



fied among Christians, therefore, according to Mill's view is necessarily 
conditioned upon an inactivity of the "speculative faculties" which im- 
pairs the social usefulness and circumscribes the moral growth of its pos- 
sessor. "It may also be said of sects and of individuals, who derive their 
morality from religion, that the better logicians they are, the worse 
moralists." 

The Manichaean form of solution is not proposed by Mill then on 
"logical" but on moral grounds, and as not in conflict with the ethical im- 
plicates of a "religion of humanity." The metaphysical conflict of good 
and evil, attended by a consciousness of human co-operation with the 
good and conviction of its progressive triumph, may be the encouraging 
speculation of him "to whom ideal good, and the progress of the world 
towards it, are already a religion." Dogmatic beliefs may be supplanted 
by imaginative theories, which the preponderating correspondences of 
natural things with human conceptions of good, make tenable, and the 
"contemplation of these possibilities" may be a proper means of stimu- 
lating good impulses. 

CONCLUSION. 

The study of Mill's thought on the subject of religion exhibits the 
mediating character of his philosophy in a manner that throws most 
light on the influence of his own individual nature in thus coloring his 
thought. That a real passion for justice dominated in the motivation of 
Mill's thought was probably the most salient fact in his career. This 
motive in him amounted to a veritable self ^dedication in the best religious 
sense, not to a dogma, but to a purpose, — the improvement of man's life, 
and especially of the lot of the less fortunate. His passion was more 
than sympathy — it was justice. Hence mere radicalism could not be the 
boundary of his efforts, nor could he accept as an adequate political phil- 
osophy mere revolutionary doctrine, with its lack of constructive poten- 
tialities, — so conspicuously shown in the French Revolution. Mill desired 
a moral renovation, but was convinced an intellectual improvement must 
be its antecedent. His belief that increasing intelligence would dispel the 
"ancient ideas," superstitions, along with ignorance, seems very like that 
of Erasmus, as do also his characteristic moderation and dependence upon 
reason and good sense to convince men. He may be properly termed a 
humanist. Justice was his armour, and intelligence his weapon, the good 
of humanity the object of his chivalrous quest. 

The fundamental formal principle throughout his philosophy is the 
mediation between traditional rationalism and extreme empiricism, or, to 
put it another way, in metaphysics he stands between idealistic rational- 
ism and dogmatic materialism. He appears to be practically an idealistic 
empiricist in psychology, and a materialist in science, — or all science 

106 



"below" psychology, which represents the borderland between the physi- 
cal and psychical. We may view him as a philosophic mediator in re- 
ligion, in his concession of a finite God as an imaginative religious idea 
not essentially in conflict with an idealization of the spirit of humanity. 
In this conception he attempts to mediate between theism and atheism, 
but without vital interest in either. Taken together his whole thought 
on the subject seems almost to amount to a proposal to use Christianity 
as the best medium, after a metaphysical reformation, which would carry 
away most of the natural theological basis and all of the dogmatic super- 
structure, including Christology. This would leave the "historic Christ" 
— or, better expressed, the real Jesus, — as the natural head of the hu- 
manitarian cult. On the other hand, his rejection of a dogmatic atheism 
or a dogmatic materialism, is thoroughgoing. 

Another illustration of this mediating attitude may be taken from 
Mill's ethics — to which the present essays have made but slight reference. 
In this field Mill introduces a principle which places him between rational 
or intuitional types of ethics, and orthodox Utilitarianism. This prin- 
ciple is that of discriminating pleasures. But if there be higher and lower 
pleasures, they must be distinguished by some standard other than utility. 
A distinction of pleasures is made by the Utilitarians, following the tradi- 
tion of Epicureanism. But Mill observes a false emphasis on their cir- 
cumstantial features rather than on their "intrinsic nature." Now the for- 
mer, such as permanency, safety, cheapness, — are not qualities, and beyond 
these the Utilitarians generally measure goods by quantity rather than 
valuing them for their qualities or character. Mill asserts that discrimi- 
nation of kinds would be perfectly compatible with their principle. Pleas- 
ures alone among human interest cannot be without qualitative distinc- 
tions. Such distinctions according to Mill exist by a universal or tacit 
consent. This agreement arises among people "competently acquainted 
with both"; when such persons prefer one pleasure to any quantity of 
another, though the former may entail discomfort we must believe the 
preferred one immeasurably superior in quality. The employment of the 
"higher faculties" constitutes the best, then, rather than the "greatest" 
(or biggest) pleasure. "Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool 
satisfied." In order to safeguard the distinction, Mill separates the "two 
very different ideas, happiness and content." Contentment may be sacri- 
ficed gladly — a phrase which at once conveys that happiness is aug- 
mented. 

Whether we must say that this distinction abandons the hedonistic 
principle, or affirm with Mill that happiness may include the subordina- 
tion, and even the sacrifice, of pleasure to pleasure, — and yet remain 
essentially "pleasure," may continue a matter of discussion. But his in- 
terpretation of the ethics of utility illustrates his manner of fixing upon 
golden means, and of thus emancipating himself — and others, from tram- 

107 



mels of dogmatism. It also illustrates his tendency to rely for support 
on certain of the more ancient authorities, in his effort to reach clarity of 
thought. The universality of the discrimination he is referring to is well- 
stated in this passage (Util., p. 10, Everyman) : "It may be questioned 
whether anyone who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of 
pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower ; though many, 
in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both." 
It is those who have tried both "kinds" of pleasure then who provide this 
criterion. Shall we say then that the ultimate principle is indeed an em- 
pirical one, but that it consists of the judgment of a cultivated intelli- 
gence ? 

In psychology again Mill chooses an attitude opposed to a rational 
conception of the soul as the ground of experience, on the one hand, and 
to the denial of the soul altogether, leaving nothing but the Humean mis- 
cellany of experiences, on the other. This attitude may be described 
epistemologically as equally out of harmony with idealistic rationalism 
and idealistic empiricism. Or, metaphysically, somewhere between ma- 
terialism and idealism ; a sort of "phenomenalism," rather than dualism. 
Mill is too much under the influence of a somewhat formal conception 
of natural law, too little vitalistic, to be a dualist, — though, as we have 
just implied, he is even less a monist. Mill's practicalism then is of a dis- 
tinctly humanistic flavor. Perhaps that is why he will not surrender the 
"soul," — that intimate human possession, be it "real" or "ideal," which 
is likely, we may presume, to bear us company to the end of the chapter. 
Now there seems to be implicit in Mill, a notion of the soul correspond- 
ing to his very well-known definition of objects or bodies. Objects are 
"permanent possibilities of sensation." The soul then is equally real as 
a ground of experience, — a "permanent possibility" of experiencing the 
sensations which are the beginning of knowledge and even of wisdom. 
This may be assailed dialectically and reduced to terms of subjective ideal- 
ism or of mechanistic materialism, that is if we are right in interpreting 
permanent possibilities as potentiality. Then applying Aristotle's distinc- 
tion of potentiality and actuality, the latter being the seat of reality, and 
even logically and metaphysically prior to the former, — what reality is 
this permanent possibility? Is the soul then anything other than the 
content of psychic life? Anything but experience itself? On the other 
hand, we may interpret potentiality as a real in the sense of the condi- 
tiones sine qua non of psychic life ; then if we ask what these conditions 
are the obvious answer is that they are comprehended in the physiological 
structure and processes of man's body, and especially of the brain and 
nervous system. Mill would have inclined to a materialistic view as far 
as it could be made without violence to fit the facts, and exclude the con- 
trary hypothesis. And this leaning would assimilate his implicit realism 
of the theory of the soul to his conception of bodies as real, in so far 

108 



as being "permanent possibilities of sensation." It could hardly be that 
he would think the possibility of the soul, albeit partly physical, even 
material, like objects themselves, could be less permanent or less real; 
in a word, that the subject should be less real than the object. 

Lord Morley notes that the greatest human and social value, accord- 
ing to Mill's view, of the positive doctrines of theological religion, is for 
consolation, and he asks with the true Agnostic wistfulness, whether 
John Mill "believed" that his "system" of "permissive hopes and blenched 
peradventures" could really give any comfort or support "worth the 
name" to souls at the "parting of the ways" to life and death. And it 
seems to the present writer that one may well start from this question, 
in attempting to explain in general terms Mill's attitude and thought on 
the religious problem. 

The real answer to Mr. Morley's question is just a gentle "No." 
Mill thought that anyone, the common man or woman, would really be 
better off without such illusory help, — provided he or she had something 
better. This something would be a living purpose, rather than a blind 
belief often most intense when directed to what after all though con- 
ceivable might not be really desirable. How neutral and ghostly the 
"reward" of endlessly prolonged "life," a life of mere vision, without 
activity, — compared to the conception of a race future and the indefinite 
continuance of one's own generations, the transmission through ages of 
that mysterious germ of life in which a man realizes a new self-hood. 
Of what significance is the objection that this "hope" is remote. What 
could be remoter than the usual hope of immortality? To bring it near 
and make it intelligible at all, it must be projected on the lurid background 
of a cosmic debacle ; and not only is this universal catastrophe inconceiv- 
able for a Copernican universe, but the resurrection admittedly awaits 
the "last trump," "the last day," — in a word, our hope is put off until 
"the end of time," an end that never will be. What could be remoter ? 

No such "blenched peradventures" are seriously offered by Mill to 
the bereaved. Only, he will not snatch such shreds of hope from those 
that have no other consolation. Nor is it a Stoic counsel that he brings. 
He believes that if quite other ideas about life and death, and man's good, 
and about real values, — about what can actually be perpetuated and what 
is worth perpetuating, — were instilled into the mind by the general edu- 
cation and experience of individuals in society, we should actually be bet- 
ter off in every way. More, — in what seems a paradoxical manner to 
ordinary religious common-sense, he even suggests in certain letters that 
Christians could remain such, and become such in an improved way, by 
actually ceasing to believe in God, and devoting themselves to a practical 
idealism based on an intensified appreciation and devotion to the historical 
founder of Christianity, as the "incarnation" of that which is human, 
and so worthy of universal reverence and consecration. 

109 



J! 

Mr. Morley's "recollection" of the sensation produced in Agnostic 
and other circles by the appearance of Mill's posthumous Essays on Re- 
ligion, pictures two causes, — the unexpected concessions to theology, and 
the relaxation of logical rigour. With reference to the latter point, it 
would seem that Mill was using with no less precision than discrimination, 
in the systematic study of this master-problem of human life, those logi- 
cal instruments for the contrivance of which he was so much admired. 
Meanwhile, it could hardly be felt (rightly) that those mere "permissive 
hopes, limited possibilities, low degree of probability, and blenched per- 
adventures," were a very grave concession to orthodox natural theology. 
As an apologetic for Christianity, — a "Christianity" divested (in one 
word) of everything naturally incredible to the human mind, — there 
would be little if anything in Mill's opinions which any "rational sceptic" 
could not accept. 

Mill's position might be designated as undogmatic non-theism. He 
was not a poet, or he might have surrounded his gravely moral and 
grimly argumentative critique of the naturalness and usefulness of re- 
ligion with that lovely atmosphere, — as of the "Syrian plain," where, on 
the tomb of the Nazarene, the "Syrian stars look down." Doubtless he 
shared the refined melancholy of the great Agnostics of his century — 
without sharing precisely their views. Whose views did he share pre- 
cisely? Only one perfect intellectual union does he record — a union 
which only himself could understand, or even believe to be all he thought 
it. But that melancholy which one may to-day see in the eyes of Mill's 
silent portrait, that gravity which accompanies — not so much "doubt," 
as conviction that what was true and sacred is no longer true, though it 
may remain sacred; — that grave melancholy which in an Arnold some- 
times becomes wistful, reminiscent and seeks poetic expression, in Mill 
adds to an energy of hope, of purpose, of wise sympathy, of energetic 
labour, — though it were mostly on the work of theory, criticism and logi- 
cal construction, — for social justice and human welfare. 



110 



VITA. 

Horatio Knight Gamier was born in Newark, New Jersey, but first 
entered the public school in Passaic, New Jersey, and was graduated from 
the high school. He finished preparation for college at Centenary Col- 
legiate Institute, Hackettstown, New Jersey, and entered Wesleyan Uni- 
versity, but removed to Columbia College the second semester. Obliged 
to resort to remunerative employment, Mr. Gamier left undergraduate 
work uncompleted, and remained a number of years in business positions, 
finally returning to academic life by entering the General Theological 
Seminary, whence he received the Degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1908, 
and was ordained a presbyter of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
spring of the same year. 

Meanwhile, having carried on work in the Graduate School of Co- 
lumbia University during i907- , o8 under the faculties of Philosophy and 
Political Science, Mr. Gamier was admitted to the degree of Master of 
Arts in 1908. Two years graduate study followed at Union Theological 
Seminary, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1910. 

The author's educational career began as master of English and 
history in the Allen- Stevenson School, New York City, i9io- , n. The 
next four years were spent at St. Stephen's College, Annandale-on- 
Hudson, N. Y., as acting professor of English and history, professor of 
history and social science, and (one year) professor of philosophy. 
(During the summer of 1913 he traveled in Europe.) Resumed grad- 
uate work at Columbia in philosophy in the fall of 191 5, continuing in 
residence three and one-half years, during which he filled positions as 
assistant in philosophy at Vassar College (first semester I9i6-'i7), in- 
structor in philosophy at Vassar (first semester I9i7-'i8), acting in- 
structor in philosophy in Columbia College and University Extension 
Teaching (spring of I9i7~'i8), and lecturer in philosophy in Columbia 
(first semester, I9i8-'i9). He is now acting professor of philosophy 
at Trinity College for the spring term (military schedule) in the tempo- 
rary absence of Prof. Urban at Harvard. 

In the spring of 19 18 Mr. Gamier passed the final examination 
under the faculty of philosophy for the degree of doctor of philosophy, 
the dissertation having been accepted. The actual conferring of the de- 
gree has awaited only the printing of the dissertation. 

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